


The Rot Beneath the Earth

by MalkyTop



Category: Xiaolin Showdown (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-06 21:09:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4236708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalkyTop/pseuds/MalkyTop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a Showdown against Hannibal, Clay starts acting weird. It's takes a bit of time for anyone to realize that he's acting wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. He Would Never

"Well, I was hopin' fer one a' th' others, but I s'pose you'll do."

It was a simple, off-hand remark that Clay could barely hear above the sounds of the vault transforming into some sort of spectacularly abstract wrestling ring. Knowing that he had heard him, Hannibal smirked. It was one of the things that Clay hated about villains, the smirk. Pretty much every one he encountered had it plastered on their face 24/7, like one of Kimiko's cucumber masks. Though he would never admit it, it was the reason that he actually liked Jack. Jack at least had other emotions besides smug.

Hannibal, on the other hand, was probably the personification of smug itself. He barely stood taller than Clay's big toe and he  _still_  looked like he had plenty of arrows in his quiver, and possibly a few already notched. Clay tried to remain impassive as the vault stairs turned into free-floating platforms in a dark void, as poles sprouted like daisies and stretched out rubber boundaries, marking out the ring (and what a large ring it was!), as Ying-Ying flew above like a particularly patient vulture and as the Moby Morpher merged with the middle platform to form an impromptu logo for the weirdest wrestling match in the universe.

The name of the game was to knock the other guy out. Clay was as wide as two axe handles. Hannibal was a bean, albeit one who could do his own stunts in a kung-fu movie. He honestly wasn't quite sure what Hannibal expected to do with the Sun Chi Lantern and the Reversing Mirror, but the dirty snake looked like he had a plan and Clay wasn't about to let it get past him.

Large platforms hung suspended in the space beyond the ring, supporting the weight of his friends. "You must not let the Moby Morpher fall into Hannibal's hands!" Omi called out needlessly. Yes, thank you for the added stress, wouldn't have known this was  _so important_ otherwise.

Hannibal looked like he was still waiting for a response. Clay took in a breath.

"Gong Yi Tampai!"

Before he even finished the sentence, Clay was already throwing the Fist of Tebigong down towards where Hannibal stood, almost brushing his own toe in the process. Hannibal, small and light, merely jumped away before his fist connected with the ground and continued doing so from ex-stair to ex-stair, towards the edge of the ring.

Clay took a step, but hung back. If he exhausted himself by making unnecessary movement, it would just make it all the easier for him to pass out. Possibly with Hannibal not even needing to throw a punch. Perhaps that was his game.

"Third Arm Sash!" he cried out, and the elastic cloth did the traversing for him, covering ground much faster than his girth would have allowed. And even then, when Hannibal turned to see the clawed tassels grabbing at him, the bean dodged all attempts like a particularly tiny figure skater, ducking and weaving and jumping out of the sash's grasp. At one point, he even grabbed the sash instead, with a grip as strong as Cyclops', and started a short tug-of-war that Clay only managed to win because he threw one of the platforms right at his face. While Hannibal was forced to let go in order to not get crushed by the slab, Clay retracted the Third Arm Sash.

Well,  _this_  was a fine stalemate, and as Clay realized this, he couldn't help but feel a little frustrated. Hannibal was too fast and small to catch. And while he could throw a surprisingly good punch for his size, he certainly couldn't knock Clay into  _unconsciousness_. Especially if Clay was being careful. Hannibal  _had_  to have known, and yet he was the one who chose the Showdown.

The sheer lack of knowledge concerning the situation was crushingly paralyzing. Clay almost wished he had the Mind Reader Conch. Almost. Hannibal's mind was probably blacker than midnight under a skillet. Some brains were just never meant to be picked.

"Clay! Don't just  _stand_  there!"

He blinked. His mind fell from great heights and landed with a morose weight back in his body. Hannibal had not waited for him to come back to earth at all, of course, and Clay could now see that he was holding aloft the Sun Chi Lantern.

"If you let him use it, you're  _toast!_ " Raimundo added, but Clay was already hopping from platform to platform, almost at running speed. That was it, that  _had_  to have been his plan. Hannibal could likely dodge rock-based attacks all day. Earth was a naturally slow element. But  _Clay_ …Clay wasn't as small and nimble, nor so hardy that he could just take rocks to the face and keep on truckin'. If Hannibal stole his elemental chi, the stalemate would be over.

Clay was slipping the Fist of Tebigong over the Third Arm Sash when Hannibal called out, "Sun Chi Lantern!"

Throwing an arm over his face, Clay tried to squint through the sudden light. Halos of rainbow popped in his eyes, but a clear shadow was still visible in the distance, even if it was about as big as his thumb. "Third Arm Sash! Fist of Tebigong!"

Even with the powerful gauntlet in what could be called its hand, the Third Arm Sash was as speedy as ever. It twisted flexibly as it aimed the bone-shattering fist towards the unmoving figure.

In the light, everybody heard Hannibal's voice ring out at that moment. " _Reversin' Mirror!_ "

There was an explosion, or maybe an implosion; some sort of pulse of sheer force that knocked the spectators off their feet and knocked the sight right out of them and, apparently, knocked the Showdown right into completion. The platforms turned back into stairs, the void shimmered to make way for reality, and nobody had  _any_  idea of who won.

As soon as Raimundo was able to see again, he thought that Clay had lost. The first thing his eyes laid upon was the Texan's prone body, lying crooked on the stairs. But giving more than a cursory glance, he could also see that the spoils were set neatly on top of Clay. Hannibal was nowhere to be seen. Another thing that went against his first hypothesis was that Clay was groaning, clearly maintaining a conscious state. Raimundo let his shoulders loosen and fall.

But as Clay started to sit up, rubbing his forehead, letting his recently-won Wu clatter onto the stairs, something swooped down upon him – Ying-Ying, who was making good on her vulture-like disposition, taking advantage of everybody's disorientation and scrabbling her talons over the Shen Gong Wu littering the floor. Clay yelped. Omi leapt, intentions clear in his eyes. But Ying-Ying was already flapping away with the Moby Morpher and the Sun Chi Lantern, escaping through a portal that she made through means nobody quite understood. With his momentum, Omi would have gone through the portal as well – and perhaps would have even leaped in on purpose – but was plucked out of the air by Kimiko until the swirling vortex that led to the enigmatic Ying-Yang World turned into a non-existent blip.

As Kimiko set Omi back down on his feet, Raimundo stepped over the Fist of Tebigong and knelt down by Clay. "You okay?"

The Texan was still covering his face with one large hand. "Urgh. Muh head feels as fulla pains as an ol' window."

Raimundo decided that this meant he felt awful.

Omi came forward next. " _Why_  did you not hold onto the Shen Gong Wu? Your inattention has cost us the Moby Morpher, even when you had won!"

Clay had nothing to say for that.

* * *

Even though Raimundo had insisted that he get some rest, Clay walked out in the training grounds only a half-hour later. Kimiko and Raimundo were sparring, but paused as they saw him approach. Omi stopped fighting with his shadow and loped over with springy ease. His face showed wary concern but his eyes showed an alarming eagerness.

"Dude," Raimundo said, turning his back to Kimiko and crossing his arms. "Didn't I tell you to take a break?"

"I jus' did," Clay replied, giving him a condescendingly matter-of-fact glance. "Feelin' much better now." He thumped himself a few times on the chest, clearly intending this as an indicator of how much better he was feeling, as though judging fitness was done the same way as judging the ripeness of a watermelon. Raimundo didn't uncross his arms. If he could, he would have crossed them even more.

Omi, on the other hand, allowed himself to smile. "I see! Does that mean you would like to spar with me? I must admit that you are more challenging than a shadow."

Clay grimaced. "How charitable. But yeah, I ain't opposed t' a li'l scrap," he said, stretching and cracking his knuckles. Omi slid into a fighting stance as easily as Raimundo sliding into bed, his smile growing neither mean nor eager, but strangely relieved. Instantly, Raimundo stood between them.

"Woah, hold up. Considering  _I'm_  the leader, I feel like I should have a say in this. Clay, I gave you the day off and you're gonna  _take_  it, okay?" When Raimundo pressed a firm finger in Clay's chest, the Texan seemed to deflate a little. He didn't even offer up another calm explanation that no, he  _didn't_  need rest, he was in fact perfectly fine. Still, Raimundo noticed that he didn't take a step back towards his room.

Omi ducked under Raimundo's outstretched arm and stared up into his face. "My friend, do not worry, for I shall not be too hard on Clay. And if he feels the need to rest, then I am sure that he will let us know! Right?"

When Omi looked back at Clay, the larger of the two managed a curt nod and a grin. Raimundo squinted. Clay's grin looked as though it was lopsided, favoring the left side, and his eyes were glancing off to the right. The expression that was meant to convey assurance only managed to look strained, which frankly just made him all the more sure that Clay wasn't supposed to be up and about.

But Kimiko tugged on his sleeve. "Look," she whispered, "just let him. We'll carry him back to his room later if we have to."

"Alright, fine." Raimundo turned back around to continue his own sparring session while Clay and Omi strode towards the other side of the field. Both Kimiko and Raimundo went through the motions, not really paying attention to what the other was doing and clearly not even paying much attention to what they themselves were doing. Their vague movements merely swiped through the air with all the weight of a distracted multitasker.

They could see that Omi was true to his word – he started out going through basic move sets, stuff that preschoolers learned in Baby's First Kung-Fu, with attacks that were easy enough to foresee and block. Especially for Clay, who practiced the defense-based tai chi. The more moves he blocked, the more advanced Omi became. Clay never made any sign of retaliating.

"I am glad you came out," Omi said as Clay caught his handspring kick and knocked him away. "I was hoping to talk to you."

"Hm." Clay took the brunt of Omi's punch with his forearm and used the opening to grab the child with the other to flip him down to the ground. Omi, small and agile, slipped his way out of Clay's grip and landed on his feet rather than his back.

"You see, I wanted to apologize for my outburst earlier. My frustration with your mistake overtook me. After a little more consideration, I realized that I should not have shouted, even if you  _were_  careless in letting Hannibal's little Ying-Ying take the Shen Gong Wu you won."

Clay grunted as Omi tried to sweep his feet off the ground, but stayed stolidly upright. "'Least  _I_  didn't betray us t' go t' Chase Young."

Both Raimundo and Kimiko dropped all pretenses of fighting, their arms pulled halfway in the air in some sort of undefined punching form. Omi fell over, having paused while trying to balance on one leg. Everything stopped.

Everything except Clay, that is, who gave an earth-shattering elbow drop straight onto Omi's stomach and stayed down, pinning the boy to the cracked ground. "I win."

" _Clay_ , what the  _hell!_ " Raimundo, quickly appearing by Clay's side, dug his fingers into his shoulders and roughly spun him around. "We're  _sparring_ , not  _fighting!_  What was  _that?!_ " Kimiko, in the meantime, had dropped down beside where Omi lay. The small boy seemed to have passed out, and she was carefully trying to rouse him.

"An elbow drop," said Clay, rolling his eyes.

"You know what I mean." With a growl, Raimundo reached up and pulled Clay downwards by his robes so that he didn't have to look upwards. "Why did you even bring that up? It wasn't his fault!"

Clay easily threw off Raimundo's grip and crossed his arms. "Yer right. It's  _loads_  better than doin' it of yer own free will."

Raimundo looked as though Clay had just spat a hoagie right in his face. His expression was both betrayed and disgusted at the same time. " _Puta que pariu,_  are you  _serious?_  After all this time, you're just gonna  _bring that up?_   _Filho da puta,_  I  _already_  think about it, like,  _all the time!_  I  _don't_  need you ragging on me too! Why don'cha take that attitude and  _vai tomar no cu_  – "

"Alright,  _enough!_ " Kimiko snapped. Raimundo continued swearing, though he did so with a mutter rather than a raised voice. With another look, he shut his mouth. Kimiko helped Omi to his feet and he tottered, trying to figure out if the past few minutes happened the way he thought they happened.

Without a word, Kimiko set Omi into Raimundo's arms and dragged a reluctant Clay back inside the residential hall. As soon as they were in a private corner, she let him go and set her arms in a disapproving akimbo, eyes quirked with fury as she tried to puzzle out the reason behind what Clay did.

When she first moved in, she hadn't thought much of the cowboy and his slow drawl, but they became fast friends – mostly because out of everybody in the temple, Clay was the one who she felt comfortable talking to, just, y'know,  _talking_ , and it was the same thing vice versa. So Kimiko was the first one to figure out that while she had a fuse shorter than a flea's hair, Clay had a temper that was slower than a glacier. And when that glacier built up enough crap, even a rubber dingy brushing up against it could cause it to collapse in a terrifying spectacle. The one time that Clay had finally retaliated against Raimundo's quips and pushed him into the freezing Arctic sea, Kimiko took him aside one night and asked him what was up. Because it wasn't  _just_  Raimundo bringing up his weight. It was the whole _year_  of Raimundo bringing up his weight, insulting his intelligence, and giving him hell for apparently no reason. It was the stress and fear that had lately come with being a Dragon Warrior, when he realized that gathering Shen Gong Wu wasn't just a stupid, fun adventure but something that set him up for hurt and pain, of the physical and the emotional. It was his worry about Jessie and his own personal insecurities. And even then, Clay had claimed that he mostly pushed Raimundo because he was cranky and cold.

After that, the two vowed to do little therapy sessions. To vent at each other at night about all the shit they wanted to keep in and be accepting and supportive and never judgmental. It would be a lot healthier than lashing out at the others. But when they started, Kimiko couldn't help but notice that she kept doing all the complaining. She tried to press Clay into talking, but he had only said that there was nothing for him to say.

Obviously, this wasn't true.

"So are you gonna say anything for yourself, or do I have to ask?" she said, giving him a soft-edged glare. She made a conscious effort not to shout.

Clay, infuriatingly, stared off to the side. He looked as though he were consulting the floorboards for answers. "Ladies first."

"This isn't a  _joke_ , Clay. You actually,  _seriously_  hurt Omi!" Kimiko gestured uselessly towards where they had left Omi and Raimundo, who were currently behind quite a few walls. "I know you probably got reasons for doing that or you broke under stress or  _something_ , but whatever's up, it's  _no excuse_  to lash out like that!"

"Ain't that th' pot callin' th' kettle black."

"Ex- _cuse_  me?!"

Clay at least had the decency to hold up his hands in a mollifying (or warding) manner. Kimiko tried to simmer down, partially because she felt she had something to prove at this point and partially because Clay was her friend, even if he was acting like a jerkface. And the very fact that he was acting like a jerkface was almost an interesting puzzle for her, something to dissect and examine.

"Look, didn't we agree to, y'know, do those little therapy sessions?  _Talk?_  So things like this wouldn't  _happen?_  Just tell me what's up, okay? I won't shout or anything." It almost took a Herculean effort for her to lower her arms by her sides. She had a dire need to  _do_ something with them. But if she followed her desire for emotional gesturing, she might also fall into her desire to just  _blow up_. And at this stage, that would only be taking steps backwards. "Was it what Omi said before? I  _know_  he can be a bit – "

"Look, y'all kin spare me th' lecture, a'ight? I was tired, is all." And this time, it was Clay holding his arms akimbo, but avoiding her gaze to instead stare at a spot somewhere above her head.

Kimiko ventured a step forward. "Clay, you know you can tell me  _anything_. We – "

"Tell Rai that I'm gonna take that break like he said." And with that, Clay pushed by Kimiko and made a point to collapse on his bed as loudly as possible.

Even she could tell when she had to put down a puzzle for later. With a bubbling fog in her mind, Kimiko left Clay to his supposed rest.

* * *

Raimundo woke up at ass o'clock in the morning.

In general, Raimundo didn't exactly wake up so much as lurch up, leaving his consciousness in bed as his body went through the typical morning actions in zombie-like stupor. Eventually, his consciousness would catch up to him, but it took quite a while. Kimiko told him that his best time was an hour. She showed him the stopwatch on her PDA.

But this time, his consciousness lurched up with him, albeit reluctantly, because it couldn't help but recognize the vault alarm system going off. Even so, it seemed that it had been buzzing for a while, because as Raimundo struggled out of his sheets and limped out the door, he saw that everybody else had already left. He wasn't sure how to feel about them not even trying to wake him up for what was undoubtedly important Dragon Warrior business. Mostly, he felt crusty.

He managed to gain some semblance of wakefulness by the time he walked into the temple vault, but it looked as though he didn't need to bother – there was nothing going on. It didn't even look like he had just missed a fight. All he saw was Kimiko and Omi standing at the top of the stairs and Clay walking out of the vault, a dour expression on his face.

"We're cleaned out," he said.

Raimundo woke up.

Clay stood by to let the others crowd down and see for themselves and sat on the ledge, letting his feet dangle like funeral wreaths.

It was true. Every single drawer was empty.

"How could this happen?" Omi asked, trying to get over the sick feeling in his stomach.

"Yeah," Kimiko said, leaning against the wall on her hand. "I mean, we got here pretty fast. It was barely time to take out maybe  _five_  of 'em. Not only that, but we didn't see  _anybody,_ so that's even  _less_  time if they got scarce before we even arrived."

Raimundo had the feeling that she was saying this more for his benefit than anything else. He gave her a curt nod, which served as both an acknowledgement and a promise to actually thank her later. "They could've gotten the Shard of Lightning first. That'd make getting everything else pretty easy."

"Ah, but Raimundo, that is the reason why the Shard of Lightning is at the  _bottom_  of the vault! Even if a crafty thief were to go for it first, he would have to go down all those stairs – and even running, he would not have been able to reach it before we arrived."

"Not only that, but y'all jus' assumed that whoever it was knew where the Shard was beforehand. Th' real perp'd prolly hafta go through the drawers one by one t' find it, an' if they did that, we'd a' caught 'em 'fore they even got halfway."

"Guys, I think you're losing sight of the problem here." Kimiko's eyes looked sharp and clear. Raimundo couldn't help but envy her ability to look good at practically all hours. "Whoever took all the Wu is probably long gone by now. We shouldn't be trying to figure out how it was done, but  _who_  did it. That way, we can actually, y'know, get them back?"

Raimundo couldn't hold back any longer and yawned. "'S probably Hannibal or something. He's into elaborate plans like this."

"Okay, then where  _is_  he? I can't help but think that he wouldn't just  _run away_  after getting literally  _all_  of our Wu. I mean, he doesn't even destroy the place a  _little?_ "

"It does seem to me that the 'running away' is something more suited to Jack Spicer's style. Perhaps  _he_  is our crafty thief?"

"Either way, it ain't like we know how t' find Hannibal. But we  _do_  know how t' find Jack. Let's jus' mosey on t' his house like usual an' shake him fer info."

"Yeah okay, good idea," Raimundo said, feeling everybody's eyes on him even when his own had closed a few minutes ago, weighed down by thoughts of his pillow. "But let's eat breakfast first."

* * *

Dojo had been about as hard to rouse as Raimundo, but as soon as he heard that their vault had been emptied, he sprang and spiraled into alertness with a grace that the Brazilian admired. At the moment, he was plowing through Jack's wall with a frightening eagerness that probably wasn't warranted and definitely not painless. The dragon grunted and shook his head, not even bothering to wait for his passengers to jump off before shrinking down to pocket-Dojo size. Despite his daze, Dojo managed to slither his way up Clay to take his customary position on his hat.

Jack did what any sensible kid would do in the case of a dragon attack and hid under his table. In the middle of his screaming, he took time to belt out, "Jack-bots! Attack!" before going right back to screaming again.

Jack hadn't been expecting a surprise attack and his robots, most of them undergoing their weekly repairs, were laughably unprepared. The fight was so inconsequential that Raimundo couldn't recall it even if he tried. It felt as though the film reel of the universe had skipped – one second, they were surrounded, and the next, they were surrounded by scrap.

Jack whimpered and covered his face when Omi flipped the table. His first reaction was to screech, " _Get out of my house!_ " as though he were in any position to demand. Kimiko sighed and nudged him with her foot.

"Jeez. Get up, we're not gonna hurt you."

"Unless we have to," Raimundo muttered, cracking his knuckles.

Still on the floor, Jack snapped both arms towards the new hole in his wall with a frown that encompassed half of his face. Everybody disregarded this.

"We merely wish to ask whether you happen to be our crafty thief, or if you happen to know who it is," Omi said, hands folded in tranquil explanation. Raimundo rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, let me do the interrogation." Jack wasn't exactly heavyweight champion material. He was easy enough to drag up with one hand. If Raimundo had the height, he would have left Jack's feet dangling while he clutched his jacket in his fist. As it was, he had to settle for leaning in dangerously close, so as to give Jack maximum exposure to his glare.

"So here's the deal.  _Someone_  stole all our Wu. Could be you. Could be someone else. Either or,  _you're_  gonna tell us everything you know, else that wall ain't gonna be the  _only_  thing messed up here."

For a few seconds, Jack continued to shiver and simper in the typical Jack way. But there was a sudden shift in expression as he glanced somewhere behind Raimundo, from wide-eyed cowardice to insulted petulance, and he pushed Raimundo's hands aside, matching him glare for glare.

"Do you think I'm an  _idiot?_ "

It was a statement that was pretty easy to counter. Indeed, Jack had made it  _too_  easy to counter, to the point that actually countering it would have been trite and not worth the effort. But Raimundo found himself confused because of the context – or the apparent lack thereof. He hadn't made any sort of insult to Jack's intelligence, at least as far as he knew.

His confusion only grew when, behind him, he heard Clay shout, " _Golden Tiger Claws!_ " It could practically be considered its own biome, with fauna and all, when Clay's massive arms enveloped him, Kimiko, and Omi, and wheeled them around straight into the recently-made spatial rift. The last thing he heard as he barreled through the interdimensional tunnel was Dojo's yelps of protest before he was thrown in as well.

All three of them landed roughly in a field that immediately stuffed Raimundo's sinuses. Dojo landed on Omi's head.

The tranquility of the scene clashed with Raimundo's turbulent confusion like a hangover. Unable to provide any answers to his own questions, he eventually had to say: "What just happened."

"Didn't you kids tell me that  _all_  our Wu were stolen?" Dojo asked, giving each of them a wary eye.

"They  _were_ ," Kimiko said defensively, her voice quavering at a nervous high pitch. "I mean…we  _thought_ …"

Omi got to his feet and started pacing around. He felt much too stressed to stand still and do nothing. "I do not understand why Clay would not tell us he had the Golden Tiger Claws. And sending us away to be left alone with Jack bodes much maliciousness."

Kimiko looked up from her PDA as it tried to locate their position by satellite. "Well…Clay was at the vault first, before any of us. So, if he had the Tiger Claws all along…then…"

The implied thought was heavy enough to stop Omi in his tracks. "Then… _Clay_  was our crafty thief…? That means that Clay has…"

" _No_ ," Raimundo finally said, his fingers digging into the dirt beneath him. "That's not Clay."

"Really? Then  _who_  was that?" Kimiko found herself raising her voice without meaning to. She spared a glance at her PDA. Apparently, they were in the middle of Finland. "'Cause it sure looked like Clay to me."

" _It's not Clay!_ " Raimundo shouted, throwing a wad of earth at nothing in particular and pushing himself to his feet. "It's, it's gotta be someone else, okay? Like Hannibal!  _He_  took the Moby Morpher, right?!"

" _Ying-Ying_  took the Moby Morpher," Kimiko said testily, raising one finger. "We never  _saw_  Hannibal after that Showdown."

Raimundo gave an exaggerated shrug and waved away the contrary words. "Same difference! The point is, Hannibal replaced Clay at some point, okay?"

"How?" said Kimiko, standing up and brushing grass off her skirt. " _When?_ "

The two sides of the argument swirled around Omi's head and, trying to find an answer of his own, he resumed pacing. Dojo wrapped himself around his ears and rested his head in his hands. "Look, I don't want to think Clay just switched sides on us either, but…this doesn't make sense. I mean, if Hannibal replaced Clay at some point, then where's Clay?"

Raimundo wanted to scream. Of  _course_  it made sense, it made  _loads_  of sense! It explained so much! Really, he didn't know why he didn't figure it out before! He  _knew_  Clay. Clay wasn't someone who would knock the stuffing out of his own friends, Clay wasn't someone who started fights or said nasty things designed to dig deep into the soul of others and stab them right at their most vulnerable part. Clay was the guy who kept walking in front of Raimundo's room on the way to Kimiko's every night so they could talk and gossip about things Raimundo wasn't privy to. Clay was the guy who ate  _everybody's_  leftovers, much to the disgust of all. Clay was the guy who used a saddle as a pillow (a freaking  _saddle_ ) and who prayed at it when he thought that everybody else was asleep, never knowing that Raimundo heard him every single time. Praying for everybody's safety and that they would all remain friends for a long while and for the world to quiet down already so that they could just be regular kids for at least a month without the weight of the fate of humanity on their shoulders.

Clay would never stab anybody in the back. Never ever. And the fact that the others were even  _considering_  the possibility made him sick to his stomach.

"Hannibal wouldn't have had much time to hide him," Raimundo said. "He's  _got_  to be someone around the temple."

Never before, not even pre-leadership, had he seen such doubtful looks.

 


	2. By and Large, the Same

Jack screamed with amazing lung capacity. He continued to scream even when Clay clamped a large hand over his mouth.

He didn't exactly have a good reason for screaming – Clay had just gotten rid of three of his enemies in one go, which certainly made the basement less crowded. And he couldn't help but appreciate that, considering one of them had been threatening him. To Jack, face-punching was often his inevitable future and anybody who subverted that was a good (relatively speaking) guy in his books.

The problem was that the good (relatively speaking) guy in this case was  _Clay_. Clay, who had absolutely  _no_  reason to help him out. But he did.

This threw Jack into utter confusion, and being thrown into utter confusion was as good as any reason Jack had for screaming, so he did.

"Jesus Christ,  _stop_ ," Clay growled, so he did. It was probably best to do what the guy wielding golden claws said anyways.

Jack kept quiet as Clay very pointedly started wiping his hand on his pants. But eventually, the redhead had to say  _something._  "So, uh, am I allowed to ask questions…? 'Cause right now I think I have a  _lot_  of questions."

"'S long as y'all don' start screamin' again."

"Right." Jack paused again, because he had handled dumb brutes before – his school had been utterly filled with them, philistines and plebs who couldn't tell the difference between AC, DC, and AC/DC. Grunting, dull, animal-like, asinine creatures who were just  _begging_  to be ruled by someone like him. And who also had a tendency to punch  _hard_. Slowly, so as to not startle Clay into painful,  _painful_  violence, Jack picked up a robot torso and held it in front of him, providing a target other than his face. Clay was a hick after all, and a Texas hick – the worst kind of hick. Unpredictably stupid, the lot of them.

Although he couldn't see it, Clay gave the impression that he was raising an eyebrow.

"Sooooo first of all," Jack said, tapping his fingers on the metal plate he held, "is this  _Clay_  or someone else? 'Cause last time, you were possessed and I  _really_  prefer knowing who I'm dealing with."

Seeing that Clay's hands were balling into fists, Jack raised the torso in anticipation – only for it to be pushed down with force, but little effort. Clay brought his face down low to Jack's, so close that his hat pressed on Jack's forehead. He smelled strongly of fried meat and musty temples, at once inducing the feeling of hunger and nausea. "Y'all don' think I'm capable a' doin' this, is that it? Buddy, I'm th' real McCoy," he said, his voice low and hushed and yet frightfully threatening. "Doubt me again an' I'll snap yer sorry li'l neck."

Jack burst out into nervous little laughter. "Um, alright! We don't want  _that_  to happen, now do we?" Still giggling, drunk with fear, Jack took a tentative step backward and almost tripped over his upturned table. Thankfully, Clay stayed where he was. "So,  _Clay_ , why exactly did you just throw your own allies to places unknown?"

This time, the heavyset boy didn't get threateningly close, but he did cross his arms, which Jack considered to be a bad sign. "So we could be  _alone_. Now are y'all done askin' stupid questions so we kin actually git down t' bizness?"

"Right, right, of course," Jack said, nodding so fast that he could set off a wildfire. "Uh…what business is this exactly?"

With a genuine smile, Clay reached into his hat and took out the Changing Chopsticks, as well as something small that was engulfed in the palm of his hand. When he set the object on the floor and enlarged it to its original size using the Chopsticks, Jack could see that it was, in fact, a very stuffed sack.

"Is that – " he started as Clay riffled through the bag with the face of a magician who knew that his audience was desperately trying to figure out his secrets.

With a flourish, Clay straightened up and spun the Sphere of Yun on one of the Claws, making a harmoniously keening sound. "This  _used_  t' be alla th' Shen Gong Wu in th' Xiaolin vault." The sound of resonating glass ceased as he abruptly let the Sphere drop in his palm. With a carefree nudge with his foot, he allowed the bag to sag a little, revealing the rest of the contents. They gleamed with power and promises of salvation. At least, that's how Jack chose to interpret the Shen Gong Wu's ability to reflect light particles.

Clay let Jack sunbathe in his own eager avarice for a moment. Then, with a voice as gentle as a push, he said, "Everythin' in this here bag kin be yers if y'all jus' do me a li'l bit o' help."

Jack could be stupid, but he wasn't  _stupid_. He had been through his fair share of negotiations. He had undergone times where he was finagled and forced into deals he didn't particularly want any part of, as well as been betrayed, abandoned, and made a monkey out of. If there was one thing he learned in the (ongoing) world domination biz, it was that behind every horribly, gut-wrenchingly tempting offer, there was always some sort of trick lurking. So he rolled his tongue back up in his mouth.

"Now, I'm not saying that I don't  _want_  this. But…if you have  _all this Wu_ , I'm just finding it hard to figure out why you need  _my_  help?" He waved his hand in a circle as though hoping it would just run into the answer. "Like…what exactly do I have that's basically worth giving me all  _that_?"

"Frankly, nothin' I cain't jus' take fer myself. 'S jus' a courtesy." Well, at least Clay was blunt and honest, unlike most people Jack dealt with. But he could do without all the  _smiling_ , and also without the easy-going air that suggested they were having a perfectly natural conversation instead of a shady negotiation laced with thinly veiled threats. Clay had always been soft, in his mind; soft in the head, soft in tone, soft with fat. But now, Clay was just… _eerie_. And it wasn't because he was different – and oh  _boy_  was he different. It was because, by and large, Clay was the  _same_.

"Y'see," Clay continued, his drawl drowning out Jack's introspection, "I feel we're somewhat alike."

Oh god, he hoped not.

"Folks underestimate you, Jack. Ain't nobody takes you seriously, not anymore." Clay set his arm around Jack's shoulders, a comforting gesture that overlaid his candid words like stiflingly sweet syrup. It was the arm that happened to be wielding the Golden Tiger Claws, which gleamed with something other than power and the promise of salvation, and so Jack gingerly wrapped his fingers around the hand and slid it off. Clay simply let his arm swing by his side. "You know that you've got so much potential, but th' folks 'round you laugh at th' notion. They only see you as some idjit."

It was very tempting to say, 'Tell me something I don't know.' But Jack hated shrinks just as much as he hated Xiaolin monks, hated the prying, the confrontation, the forced introspection. Instead, he sounded a casual grunt, if grunts could be casual, and turned his head away in a very typical teenager-y dismissal. But he didn't turn his head so far as to completely face away from Clay.

"Believe me, I know th' feelin'. Bein' called  _'hick'_  an'  _'country bumpkin,'"_  Clay spat, his voice dropping the amicable tone like a hot plate of bitter chocolate, and Jack tensed in realization and wheeled around, half-expecting thick hands around his neck and hoarse, rough screaming, not from one voice but from two. But Clay wasn't right in his face, nor his hands raised at throat-level. In fact, he had moved away from Jack without his noticing, sitting on the overturned desk. His smile was still set on his face. He had never stopped smiling. At least, not that Jack saw. "So you an' me, we're th' same. Nobody takes us seriously. But I gotta plan that'll make folks sit up  _straight_  when I walk by, an' if y'all help me with it,  _you'll_  be taken seriously too. Become ruler o' th' world. Whatever floats yer boat."

Jack bit his lip and glanced down at the bag at Clay's feet, bloated like a ruptured stomach. " _Not_  that I'm taking your deal or anything, but what's this plan of yours exactly?"

Clay's grin split his face like a friendly gash. "Defeat Chase Young."

Jack opened his mouth.

" _Interesting,_ " said a voice that was definitely not Jack's. Wuya stepped out of the shadows, where Jack would have sworn she hadn't been before. "Is there room for one more in this plan of yours?"

"Ma'am," Clay said in acknowledgement. He tipped his hat with the demeanor of someone raising a shield.

"How long have you  _been_  here?!" It was probably inadvisable for Jack to prod his finger demandingly at an unspeakably old witch, powers or no, but he did so anyways. It displayed a strong relationship of sorts, built up through years in each other's company. Or it displayed extreme stupidity. The universe seemed to favor the latter when Wuya's arm snaked out and snatched Jack's wrist with a grip that didn't seem to stop blood flow so much as suck the blood right out.

"A while," she said lightly as though she weren't about to twist someone's wrist to near uselessness.

Their strong relationship (or sheer stupidity) prompted Jack to simper out, "Well, why didn't you  _help_  me earlier?"

"Didn't feel like it," she replied, and then finally let go of Jack's hand. He took it back as though receiving the gift of God. "So, about the downfall of Chase. I want in."

Clay rubbed his chin as Jack retreated towards whom he viewed as the lesser evil. "I s'pose I'll need yer help too."

"Woah, woah," Jack butted in, forming a 'T' with his hands despite one of them being temporarily mangled. "Hello? It's  _so_  obvious that she just wants to  _use_  us to get her powers back so she can backstab us and take the world for herself! Again, not saying I'm agreeing to help yet."

"I will  _not_ ," Wuya said, amazingly petulant for one her age. "I happen to  _pride_  myself on honoring any formal deals I make."

Jack opened his mouth.

"With people who  _actually get things done._ "

Jack closed it again.

"Well," Clay said, pushing himself upright again and placing himself between the two, "I reckon there ain't no reason fer backstabbin' or deception or whatnot."

"I believe you are correct,  _Clay,_ " Wuya stressed with a smirk, eyebrow arched as though she were sharing a private joke. Only Jack noticed that Clay balled his hands into fists for a few seconds, but only because he was watching out for it. "We help you defeat Chase. You help me get my powers back and possibly make Jack less pathetic. And then we split the world, yes?"

Clay waved a hand. "Y'all kin worry 'bout that, I'm jus' after Chase." This, finally, seemed to shock Wuya a little, but she recovered. Of course she did, it was only good news. More world for her.

Jack let out a cough that didn't exactly grab attention, rather, scrabbled on the ground, begging for attention. "Look, I'm still not sure about this. Like, I'm pretty sure I can trust Wuya to be untrustworthy, but you?" He instinctively raised his hands as though he was still holding the robot torso. He wished he was. "I don't like you at  _all._ You freaking tore my hair out as some sort of sick  _trophy!_ "

Clay stared down the accusatory finger with crossed arms. "An' y'all flooded my house up t' th' roof, damagin' lots o' furniture an' such. Lotta perfectly fine livestock went an' drowned too, 'cuz o' that."

Jack's finger lilted to the side. "Okay, I see your point. We'll just call it even, then."

Wuya tapped her fingers on her own arms, a scowl on her face that she didn't even bother to contain. "So are you in?"

If Jack was being honest with himself, he had been in ever since the clarion call of a buttload of Shen Gong Wu sounded. Instead, he only shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Whaddya need?"

"Well," Clay said, tossing the Sphere of Yun around in his hands, "I already got th' Reversin' Mirror. But I'll need th' Crystal Glasses an' th' Wushan Geyser."

Wuya had the Wushan Geyser, and she tossed it easily towards him without a thought. Jack was the one with the Crystal Glasses. When Wuya asked, incredulous, why he hadn't used them to his advantage before, Jack shuffled his feet and mumbled something about the future being depressively full of failure.

Clay tuned out both of them and strode towards a corner in order to prepare.

* * *

Chase greeted them with a request that they leave.

"I was hopin' t' have a friendly li'l challenge, sir. One-on-one sparrin'? Jack tells me yer a tai chi master."

Jack quailed under the sudden attention. "I am  _totally_ not with them, I don't have anything to do with this, I  _swear._ "

Chase continued to stand godlike above them all, judging silently atop the stairs, his cats spread around him like equally-judging angels. He squinted at Wuya, who responded with a flirtatious wave. "I do not fight merely for the sake of fighting. If you think me such a brute, then I suggest you turn around and abandon whatever simple little  _trap_  you had planned for me."

"No traps," Clay said, hands raised with polite acquiescence, "jus' a wager. If you win, I pledge my loyalty. Interested?"

Chase opened his mouth, but soon closed it again, being one who preferred to contemplate with tight lips. "And what would happen if I lose?"

"Y'gotta give back alla Wuya's powers."

Chase glanced to Wuya once more. Her tiny little wave was now less flirtatious and more malicious.

"You surprise me…Clay. I had thought you one above making such foolish alliances. What exactly do you seek to gain by being the errand-boy of this witch?"

Clay kept his mouth shut and his fist tight around the bag.

"…Very well." With an impressive leap, Chase landed in front of his guests with a force that could be felt through the entire mountain. "I can't say that I'm particularly interested in having you swear loyalty to me, but I suppose you could have your use." Jack, the only one who seemed to bother recognizing a pattern, glanced towards Clay. He shook as though he were struggling to not start the fight prematurely. "But before we begin, I would like to know what's in the bag."

"Jus' a bit o' Wu," Clay replied, hefting up the bag, which looked as though it was about to rip open like a particularly violent, blooming flower.

Chase gave a rather pointed glower – more pointed than usual. "I hope I am not incorrect in my assumption that this little wager is a test of our skills, rather than a contest of who has the most toys. If we are to fight, I must insist that you put those away."

"Well y'see," Clay drawled, scratching at his chin in such a way that hid his mouth, "I'd be happy t' do jus' that. 'Cept this here is my…precaution, y'could say? T' combat yer advantages, y'see."

"A higher level of skill is  _not_  merely an – "

"I meant yer more scaly side."

At this, Chase rankled. Very much like a cat, Jack observed. But despite everything, Chase's voice came out as steady and sure as ever. "I do not appreciate what you happen to imply, but rest assured that I will not…transform."

"Yer armor too. Not much of a fair fight," he added, gesturing to his casual clothes. With a sigh, Chase removed his armor, revealing simple, light, and aesthetically uninteresting clothes underneath.

"An' also," Clay said, nodding his head to the swarm of jungle cats around them.

Chase closed his eyes, his furrowed brow the only thing marring his otherwise calm demeanor. But even so, he raised a hand to snap his fingers – and the cats vanished. "Now you."

Clay smiled and tossed the bag towards Jack, who immediately collapsed under the weight. "'Preciate y'all bein' so accomodatin'. Y'don' see that much, nowadays."

"Let's just get this over with." Chase's eyes slid towards Wuya and Jack with a threatening glare before snapping back to Clay with lazy boredom rather than confidence. Even when he uncrossed his arms to move into a fighting stance, he did so with slow, uninterested languor. His limbs held a power that was not yet all there. Clay's stance, in response, looked much firmer and more grounded.

They proceeded to stand like that for several minutes.

Jack pushed the bag off his terminally crushed ribs and sat up, squinting. When Clay claimed that he was going to fight Chase, Jack had expected…y'know, a  _fight_. "Are they gonna  _do_  something?"

Wuya leaned over and grabbed the top of his skull, so he decided to stop talking.

Chase was the one who made the first move, with a punch that made the air whistle, but which turned into a grapple when Clay raised an arm to block. When Chase tried to twist Clay's arm in a painful direction, Clay didn't resist – instead, he flipped his body in relation to his arm and landed neatly on his feet, backwards, using the momentum to then throw Chase in front of him. As soon as Chase landed (on his feet as well), he swept the floor with a leg, which Clay jumped over, using the opportunity to attempt a flying kick straight into Chase's face. Unfortunately, this created an opening for Chase to grab both of his legs and throw him to the ground, which immediately buckled under the weight. But Clay didn't even give his breath a chance to get knocked out of him – instead, he used his hands to spring back up from the floor, propelling his legs into Chase's chest and pushing him away. They landed a ways apart from each other and stopped, frozen in different stances. Chase untensed. His face was now sharp with focus.

The fight continued on in this manner for a long time – a flurry of action that Jack could barely keep up with and then a sudden pause as the two stared each other down, going through a mental rote of future moves that Jack couldn't see. And then yet more moves, which Chase always initiated: high-kick, catch, step up from hand, axe-kick, flip, handspring into a tackle, roll to avoid broken bones, stand, stop. Leap forward, duck, headlock, flip over into piledrive, spin kick, jump back, stop.

And on and on and on…

Clay was able to avoid attacks before they happened, which seemed to irk Chase to no end, but it was clearly exhausting him and there were just some moves he couldn't avoid. At the end of every set, even if Clay was the one to score several hard-hitting punches, it was always the Texan who was panting, leaning forward with a hunched back and screaming muscles. Chase's posture was ever-perfect, even if he did seem to be gleaming with sweat. As the fight went on longer and longer, Wuya's grip on Jack's head squeezed tighter and tighter. Clay better win the fight soon – Jack wouldn't put it past the hag to crush his skull like a watermelon by  _accident_.

The next bout of fighting started with a sense of explosive force. Flying tackle, catch, slide back, smash head against ground, again, throw back, butterfly kick, land on far wall, shoot forward, stand like a batter against a fast ball, axe kick down, slam against wall, choking headlock, push back, flurry of punches…

Jack's eyes crossed. If he watched any longer, he was sure he would get a nosebleed. Even when he looked away, the sounds of sheer concussive force rattled around in his head like a rock, banging against the skull that Wuya was steadily crushing in her hand. He felt like a balloon, pressure welling within and pressure coming from without. When Wuya gasped and finally let go, he almost thought his head would burst at the sudden change in pressure balance.

Chase had made a dire error which allowed Clay to grab him, lean backwards, and slam his head into the floor so that he was partially embedded. Before Chase could pull himself out, Clay kicked him not unlike a golfer striking the tee, and then proceeded to lay a foot on his chest in such a way so that if Chase even tried to move, he could snap the sternum with a little push.

Chase lay without breathing for several agonizing seconds before he finally breathed out, "You win."

Clay removed his foot. Wuya rushed forward in a sudden burst of energy, grabbing onto Chase's wrist even as he stood up to recuperate, leaving Jack behind with a bag of Wu and an aching head. Clay stood aside as Wuya leaned in close to snarl, "Alright, you know the deal – cough it up."

Chase gave an inconvenienced sigh, the sort of sigh one makes upon seeing the line at the post office, and made a few unspeakable symbols with his hands. When the flash of light died away and Jack could risk lowering his arm, he saw that Wuya was wreathed in those familiar green flames, her very skin alive with power.

With a sharp grin, she set a hand lightly on Chase's shoulder. It was knocked aside without hesitation, but this did not affect her good spirits. "Why Chase, don't you want me to thank you  _properly_  for granting me my full powers after  _locking it away_  for so long?"

Chase didn't even open his mouth to respond. Instead, his eyes snapped to a space behind Wuya's shoulder.

"Sphere o' Yun!"

Jack blinked. The scene wasn't much different, besides the striking addition of a magical sphere surrounding both Chase and Wuya. This little detail seemed to take a while to properly reach Wuya's consciousness, but when it did, she wasted no time collapsing into a storm of fury as Chase leaned back against the barrier to give her the space she needed to spit and curse and pound on the walls. Clay very easily ignored her ragged words spoken with a guttural, primordial tongue and slid the Golden Tiger Claws back on his hand. With a nod towards Chase, he said, "Was nice o' y'all not t' check my hat."

Jack took a few advancing steps but stopped when Wuya started to make gestures that he associated with magic and pain. Much to Jack's horror, Clay laughed and leaned forward until his nose was practically touching the surface of the Sphere. "Somethin' th' matter? Lemme guess – yer tryin' t' do  _this_."

Spinning around, Clay thrust his arms forward and shot out balls of green flame at what used to be a beautifully carved pillar. Now, it was half of a beautifully carved pillar. Jack gaped. So did Wuya, but she soon slipped back into seething rage and hate.

"Be quiet, would you?" Chase muttered out, and Wuya turned on him. He put on a look of mild annoyance. Wuya was still screeching even as Clay sliced open a spatial rift in the air and shoved the Sphere of Yun into it. Long after it had shut, cutting off Wuya in mid-rant, Jack found himself still unable to move. He flinched when Clay strode over and clapped his non-Clawed hand on his shoulder.

"She woulda backstabbed y'all anyways," he said as though that explained everything. "Yer welcome."

"Wh-where did you send them?" Jack asked, desperately needing something to clutch but only finding the ends of his coat. "I'm only asking 'cause, uh, you  _did_  promise me  _all_  of the Wu…so…it's technically mine…?"

Clay tipped up his hat in order to give him a look of smug disdain. "I promised y'all th' Wu in th' bag."

"Oh," said Jack, because he really didn't have any other response for being utterly outsmarted. "Um. Thanks. I guess I should be getting out of, uh,  _your_  fortress now?" Somehow, his flimsy arm managed to find the bag and Jack started dragging it away to the door. The fortress was starting to feel stifling – and not just because of all the cat hair.

Clay scratched at his chin, and even that was enough to make Jack wince. "Mm. Nah, y'all kin have it. An' actually – " here, he set both pinkies in his mouth and let out a harsh whistle, " – take them cats too. Don' really need 'em."

Jack shied away from the large cats that were now circling him because even with Clay's invitational assurance, they looked for all the world like they were going to eat him. "I – uh, you're…so kind…" To his embarrassment, he giggled. The sea of cats parted as Clay moved towards the door, and Jack shuffled aside as well. Against his better judgment, he said, "Um, so…what're you gonna do next…?"

"I got my plans, don'cha worry. Y'all have fun takin' over th' world."  _So long as y'all don' get in my way_.

Shivering at the ghost of unsaid words, Jack couldn't help but thank God for the sight of Clay's retreating back. But of course, like all living beings (and some non-living ones), God hated Jack's guts. So as soon as he finished that thought, Clay turned around.

"Actually," he said, and there was a strangely foreign but recognizable quality to his voice. After a moment, Jack realized why it was so familiar – it was uncertainty, that ever-present figure in his life. "I'd like t' check somethin' if y'all don' mind…"

"No, no, no, not at all," Jack said, clutching at the bag like a life preserver as he felt hundreds of cat eyes fall upon him.

"I'll be outta yer hair in a jiff, sorry 'bout this."

Jack had experience of the fortress's layout, having inherited it once before. Not only that, but he had long ago committed to memory the ins and outs of the place – it was, after all, the home of someone he considered his idol, and he was one of those types who would feverishly memorize the daily activities of his crushes in order to 'just happen' to meet up with them.

So, watching Clay retreat down a hall, he had a good idea where he was going. But he didn't want to follow, not with all these cats surrounding him. For one, Jack was sure that spying was one of the things that Clay wouldn't appreciate – which potentially meant a punch in the face. For another, even when Clay put him in charge of the feline warriors, as Jack looked across the tundra of gleaming eyes, he didn't feel in charge of anything at all.

 


	3. And They Say Chivalry's Dead

Raimundo practically flew through the temple in a desperate, but thorough rush, asking the others whether they checked behind this or under that and then checking himself anyways, somehow managing to exhaust Kimiko even when she finally sat down and simply watched. During the many times he passed by, Raimundo didn't even stop to nag her to keep searching.

But eventually, he had to sit down too. Kimiko moved aside to give him some room as he slid down the wall and to the floor, covered in dust and dirt and the smell that always seemed to linger around old things. Neither of them had any idea where Omi went, because he was more thorough than anybody – even more than Raimundo, in his stressed state.

Unlike certain people she knew, Kimiko had tact. This was why she waited a few minutes before saying, "He's not here."

Raimundo forced his eyes to trace the crevices of his palm because otherwise they would flit around like a nervous moth, a scared animal; and right now, he needed to be composed. "Doesn't mean he actually turned on us."

"Doesn't mean that he didn't either," Kimiko said, her tone slow and measured, as though a gradual immersion in her words would make the fall from hope softer.

"Why d'ya gotta be such a pessimist?"

"I'm not," she said, and it was true. She was only being realistic, her mind open to several possibilities, even the ones that were painful to contemplate.  _Raimundo_  was the one being obstinately optimistic, obsessively so, and she was only trying to ground him as gently as possible. Out of everybody, he was the only one who had never gone through the genuine feeling of betrayal. For him, the stories of friends turning their backs always ended with some revelation that it hadn't been his friends at all; simply some strange circumstance that propelled his friends towards false duplicity. But Kimiko knew better, and the ironic part was that of all people, Raimundo should have known better too.

But because she had tact, she said none of this. And it wasn't like Raimundo was necessarily  _wrong_ …just a little delusional, she felt.

"We should figure out what to do next," she said, because they had sat around long enough.

Raimundo gave a nod that was really more of a lilt. "We should…go find him, I guess. You get Omi. I'll go find Dojo. We'll meet outside, okay?"

But when Raimundo started walking, his legs took him directly to Clay's room. He hesitated, then entered, telling himself that he was only checking for clues, it'll only take a minute.

The smell of Texas still permeated the area, leather and barbeque sauce and something earthy rolled into one. It was as if Clay had only gone out for a bit and would be back soon to find Raimundo trespassing, with some hokey Texas saying prepared on his lips. Raimundo's eyes dragged their way across the walls, over the private trunk, the saddle, the discarded action figures…

For one delirious second, Raimundo thought that he saw a snake – but then he blinked. The snake was Dojo.

"I'm sorry," the dragon said, partially hidden behind the saddle, "I was looking for him, I  _swear_ , it's just that then I came here…and…"

Raimundo hunched his shoulders and looked away, feeling both the intruder and the intruded upon. "It's fine."

Dojo moved to exit the room but lingered at the foot of Clay's bed, stuck fast by the tar of nostalgia. "It's funny," he said in the manner of someone who knew that it wasn't. "You'd never think – "

"He  _didn't_ ," Raimundo said, but it was more out of habit than anything else, the words firm only because he had practice saying them. "I know him. He wouldn't…"

Dojo gave him a look that implied that he was staring down at him, despite standing barely higher than his ankles. It reminded Raimundo of the look that his parents gave him when they wanted him to know that he wasn't fooling anybody, even if he was fooling himself. It was a look specifically designed to cut through bullshit. "You  _know_  him, hm? You know he's a  _paragon_  of patience and virtue?"

Raimundo stepped back and threw his arms into the sky, his face scrunched up in distaste. "What I  _know_  is that he's not the type – "

"So  _of course_  you know that he was bullied as a kid and he just  _took_  it, right? And  _of course_  I don't need to tell you  _why_  he wishes he could go to Cornell, 'cause  _obviously_  he told you himself. And I'm  _so sorry_ for not realizing that the two of you talk  _so much_  about the future! I'm sure you've had many  _fun_  conversations about things like spaceships and  _life expectancy_  and  _missed opportunities_  and stuff. Because you  _know_  him."

Raimundo tried to unclench his jaw, but it was like the hinges were made of caramel. He raised a hand to his chin but abruptly changed his mind and crossed his arms, not looking down at Dojo but rather to the side of him. "What's your point?"

Dojo's gaze softened and gently, he laid a hand on Raimundo's foot. When the boy didn't react, he circled up and around with a practiced air until he sat at his shoulder. "My point is," he said, more quietly, less righteously, "the people around you, they've got their own private lives going on. Worries and fears and stress they don't often let others in on. Things that motivate them to do things that surprise you." A pause, to gather thoughts, or perhaps to rethink them. "When you're as old as me, you learn to…almost expect these things, really."

It was harder to avoid looking at Dojo when he was right there by his face. It was even harder to sound dismissively resentful. "Don't pretend to be some 'wise sage' or whatever when  _you_  were caught off-guard like everybody else," he said, meaning to spit out the words but only mumbling them so that he wasn't even sure if he actually said them to begin with.

"Look, kid, I was surprised. But that's  _waaay_  different from it being surprising to me. I know you wanna keep thinking of Clay as this big, nice goofball, but frankly,  _everybody's_  got a certain balance of good chi and bad chi in them, and even if the bad stuff's in the minority, it's still there. All we do is manage the balance, pushing back the bad whenever it tries to take over. But…you know. Everybody has their limits." Dojo sighed out the weight of fifteen hundred years and more. It floated around Raimundo in a cloud of heavy emotion. "I guess…Clay reached his."

No, no, that wasn't it. And he wasn't just thinking that out of pure denial, there was just… _something_  that was clicking. Something about what Dojo said and what Hannibal did back when he tried to steal the Moby Morpher from them just yesterday even though it felt like eons ago. Raimundo's crossed arms slackened and threatened to drop to his sides. His eyes sharpened, as though his mind was a whetstone, and stared at Clay's trunk without seeing it.

The reason why Clay stole all their Wu. The reason they didn't see Hannibal after the Showdown, not even hear him curse their name or gloat or whatever. The reason why Ying-Ying took the Wu that she did…why Hannibal…

The earth shook, but not because of any stunning revelation; rather, because of a more mundane reason. An earthquake.

Raimundo fell backwards, and he could see the puzzle pieces in his mind's eye scatter again, the answer scrambled beyond intuition. There was something he needed to look up…something…

"Raimundo!  _Rai!_ "

"Uh?" he said, looking up. Dojo was waving an arm in front of his face, and when he saw that Raimundo was jolted back to earth, he pointed up towards Kimiko and Omi. Kimiko, who was clutching her PDA. Omi, who was fiddling with the ends of his sleeves.

All thoughts of metaphorical puzzles imploded into dust in his mind. The look in Kimiko's eyes was more than serious, it was dead serious, holding back an ocean that hid skeletons in its depressingly unfathomable deeps.

"Tsunami," she said, her voice letting out a tiny bit of that ocean. "It's – it's headed for Tokyo."

* * *

They headed out immediately before even going over every important bit of news, because a tsunami didn't wait around.

"Ten earthquakes at once in the same minute," Kimiko said, showing them the breaking news reports full of solemn faces. "Then a monster tsunami aiming for Japan. And reports of possible volcanic activity in southern Brazil."

"I can see that the earthquakes are clearly the work of Clay – " and here, Omi winced and glanced towards Raimundo in case he had needed permission to say that, " – but I am not sure…how exactly could he have caused the other things?"

"Tsunamis are caused by severe water displacement," Kimiko rattled off, finding stability in facts. "And earthquakes can cause that. I think it's the same for volcanoes…like if you give them a good shake or something?"

Omi was silent for a second. "I did not realize that Earth could do so much."

The thought that the element of earth was even more dangerous than he had expected, that  _Clay_  was more powerful than he realized, was…well, it was obvious in hindsight. Earth wasn't just dirt and stuff, it was the very thing they stood on, the thing the  _world_  was made of. But somehow, looking at Clay, that had been easy to forget, or ignore, or something. "Omi, you can handle a tsunami, right?"

"It shall not even reach shore," he promised, his crossed arms like unbreakable chains.

"I'll go with him," Kimiko blurted out, and Raimundo shook his head.

"Sorry, but I need you at the volcano. You'll be better than me at controlling the fires."

"Do you think  _he'll_  be there?" Dojo asked. Nobody needed clarification. Nobody wanted the answer.

The very thought of a confrontation was enough to shut down conversation, and as Dojo sped his way to Japan, racing against the giant wave below, the atmosphere felt thin. Thinner than usual, anyways. Raimundo almost breathed out a sigh of relief when Kimiko's PDA beeped and brought sound back in the air.

She glanced at it and her eyes darkened. "Freak tornado in the States."

"Okay, I  _know_  those aren't caused by earthquakes."

Kimiko shoved his shoulder, falling into the role of the exasperated member of the team in order to introduce a sense of normality into the tension. "Don't be stupid, he probably used the Sword of the Storm."

"He is trying to divide us," Omi said, not recognizing the subtle efforts to steer the conversations into lighter tones.

"Yeah, well," Raimundo said and quickly realized that he hadn't actually thought of a way to finish the sentence. He was forced to drift off into silence, and the pause lasted an awkward duration of time until Dojo made a sudden descent that left all of their ears popping.

Kimiko hugged Omi before he jumped off. "Good luck."

"Return uninjured," he pleaded, before facing the direction of the wave. Even when they took off once more and he became only a dot of color consumed in the landscape, he maintained the look of a powerful sentinel.

* * *

The constant cascade of ash and smoke forced Dojo to land quite a ways away from the eruption itself. Trindade clashed with Kimiko's idea of Brazil, desolate and aggressively rocky, an angry archipelago that seemed ready to throttle any flora that dared grow – but perhaps the looming volcanic eruption was coloring her view. Kimiko jumped off, glad that she had gotten good hiking boots. Judging by all the cliffs, she had a bit of a climb ahead of her.

"Y'sure you can handle it?" Raimundo said, almost ready to jump off himself. He was facing her, but his eyes were drawn to the angry billows of smoke. "I mean…can you even deal with lava?"

"I'll figure something out," she said. "Besides, you're the only one who can stop that tornado."

"Yeah," he said, as though it was a curse. Kimiko only nodded to Dojo and, whether Raimundo had more to say or not, he was off. Kimiko watched the serpentine ribbon weave its way across the sky before tying a piece of cloth around her mouth and heading into the rain of ash. It was at this point that she wished she had brought some of her less favorite clothes.

The hike was rough and long, punctuated by threatening rumbles that shook the ground beneath her. Not that she was thinking about running away, but Kimiko was glad that the only occupants of the island were that of a Navy base – a fully evacuated Navy base, on top of that. It gave her more space in her mind to focus on just getting to the top, as well as more space to devote to fretting over her own hometown. But the thought of Omi having millions of people under his responsibility in comparison to none at all made her clench her teeth and force herself out of the mire of her dark thoughts.

But, she found to her dismay, she couldn't even reach the top anyways. Her way was barred by an unnaturally sheer rock wall that stretched up several meters, completely without footholds. The fact that her climbing had been for naught wasn't the cause for dismay – no, it was what the appearance of an unnatural wall meant. And as she shielded her eyes against the ash and peered at the top…yes, there it was, a sitting figure casually swinging his legs over the edge. Shit.

Clay landed with a dull  _thrum_ , forcing Kimiko to step back for balance. When he straightened, she saw that he had used his neckerchief to cover his own mouth. Even so, she could see his smile. It was housed in his cheeks.

"I was really expectin' Rai," he said, a hint of reproach poisoning his tone. "But I s'pose I was gonna git 'round t' y'all at  _some_  point."

There were a lot of things Kimiko could say at this point, and certainly a lot of things she wanted to say, but sentences jumbled around in her mind, mixing up anger and trepidation and a longing to be anywhere but here. Was she supposed to plead for him to come back? Was she supposed to shout, shame him into acquiescing?

"What's with the wall?" she asked, and then almost smacked herself in the face. Of course, it was the thing that was easiest to say that she said.

"I figure it's a mite hard t' spar onna island covered in lava," Clay replied, stretching his arms. On his left hand hung the Golden Tiger Claws. Even in the storm of ash, they gleamed. "So I made somethin' t' keep it up there."

"By 'spar' do you mean an  _actual_  spar or a fight?" Kimiko asked, sliding her feet into a more stable stance. Her mind was clearing now – she clung to the suggestion of a battle gratefully, a clear path of action towards a cut-and-dry goal now opening up. Clay was still Clay, but now he was a Threat with a capital 'T,' and although she wasn't sure how to deal with Clay, she knew how to deal with Threats. Even Threats that came in the form of her friends.

Clay chuckled amiably. "Jus' a nice li'l hand t' hand. Here, I won't even use th' Tiger Claws." The golden Claws clattered onto the rock. Kimiko's eyes followed after it, staring much longer than was advisable. He had just  _dropped_  it…just right in front of her. They couldn't be more than a leap away. If she was fast enough…

Her eyes snapped back up to Clay's face. He betrayed no thoughts behind that soft smile of his, no expectation of what she had just considered doing. But he  _had_  expected it, hadn't he? There was no  _way_  he didn't think what she just thought.

"Fine," she said, her throat feeling sore – and it wasn't because of the ash. "If it'll knock some sense into you."

Clay's smile only widened and he too sank into a balanced pose. Kimiko didn't even wait for him to get ready. She sprung off the ground and shot towards him, digging her elbow into his stomach.

Clay slid back a few inches, a grimace on his face that twitched into a whoop of disbelief. "Jumped th' gun a li'l, didn'cha?" Kimiko jumped backwards before he could grab her arm.

"All's fair," she said, her mind running through possible move sets. She was already starting off at a disadvantage – Clay was as solid as, well, a rock wall, and compared to him, she was as fragile as a candle's flame. Getting caught by him would mean a quick end for her. The best strategy would be to press her speed advantage and attack relentlessly, or as relentlessly as was possible.

She feinted left and weaved right, ducking under a swinging fist before wrapping her arms around the crook of his elbow, tugging, and letting his weight do the rest. Before he could even thud onto the ground, she brought her leg down in an axe kick onto his throat – but couldn't continue her chain of attack, as Clay immediately rolled away from her.

The glint of gold vied for her attention and she couldn't help but look. The Golden Tiger Claws were right at her feet…she found her hand reaching down…

And then Clay tripped her. Her head bounced off the stony ground and her vision fizzed for a second, and the cloth fell from her face and she took a wheezing breath of shock that turned into a wracking cough. But above, she could see Clay's looming figure winding up a punch and, ignoring the possibility of a bleeding head, she tucked up and did a backwards handspring to her feet before retying her makeshift mask.

But the odd thing was, Clay hadn't even moved his fist. He looked up to where she now stood and straightened up again, a strange look on his face. A look of reluctant frustration. Not at her, she realized, but at himself.

_He still couldn't hit girls._

Usually, Clay's stubborn chivalry would have elicited outbursts and lectures full of eye-rolling and terse explanations about how  _no_ , chivalry  _wasn't_  exactly a good thing, all of which Clay would repel with the words, "It jus' don' feel  _right._ " But now,  _now_  she could barely restrain a laugh, even when she now had irrevocable proof that this was no imposter. He couldn't actually  _fight._

She relaxed her stance, and stayed relaxed even as Clay kept his arms raised.

"What're y'all doin'?" Clay demanded, practically spitting out the words. "We're  _fightin'!_ "

"No, we're not," she said, crossing her arms, a buoyant smile on her lips.

Clay wobbled on the balls of his feet, as though her words had more force than her punches ever had on him, before letting out a hoarse roar and charging straight towards her, fist raised. She stood. She continued to stand even as he got dangerously close, even as he threw the punch, and didn't even flinch when the fist stopped itself in front of her nose.

"No," she said, "we're not."

Clay's entire body moved with his heavy breaths, laboring with all the force that he didn't use, before he dropped the fist and turned around, kicking at the ground and tearing at his hair. He didn't scream any words, only screamed with the power behind the unthrown punch, until he finally fell to his knees and pounded the ground until he had to stop, lest he tore open his hand. Kimiko uncrossed her arms, still able to hear his breath rattling in his throat.

"Why?  _Why?_  Why'm I so  _stupid?_ "

Kimiko stepped forward, a hand raised ready to set on his shoulder. "You're not, Clay. I mean, I think this shows that you've got strong convic – "

In an instant, Clay wheeled around, standing,  _looming_ , his large hands  _almost_  strangling her neck. Not quite. " _I don' need yer pity!_ " He seemed to struggle for another minute as Kimiko, holding up an impassive face, simply stood there. His hands tried to push against the invisible forcefield that only existed in his own mind. And then he brought them to his face and turned around and stomped, muttering, pinching his nose.

At this point, it seemed that now was a good time as ever to pick up the puzzle again. "Clay," Kimiko said, aggressively soft, as though her calmness could permeate the atmosphere and force the tension to dissipate. She didn't step forward this time. "Let's talk about this. What's going on? What do you need?"

Clay paused in his mumbling to snap a glare towards her. "I need y'all t'  _fear_  me."

At this, the hair on the back of Kimiko's neck couldn't help but rise. Still, she forced down the welling  _something_  in her throat and kept her voice even. "No you don't.  _You_ need to go back to the temple. We should – "

" _That_!" Clay roared, facing her again and pointing a sharp finger. " _That's_  why! Y'all think I'm jus' some bumblin'  _hick_  what don' know better? I'll show y'all jus' what I'm capable of!"

"Nobody thinks that. You're my  _friend,_  Clay, and I respect – "

"No," Clay growled, "If you  _respected_  me, y'all wouldn' be  _invalidatin'_  me, y'all would  _listen_ , 'stead o' sittin' there, treatin' me like I've got too many cobwebs in th' attic." He was giving her his full glare now, and Kimiko could see his fingers digging into his palm so hard that she worried he would break skin. "I'm gonna make y'all take me seriously. Yer gonna  _fear_  me."

"Clay," Kimiko said as kindly as she could, given the situation, "you can't even bring yourself to hurt me."

"Yeah," he said, clutching at his eye, taking off his hat and running his hand through his hair, "'cause I ain't strong 'nuff yet. But I know how t' get stronger." He tipped his hat in an easy arc, and a can of soup plopped into his other hand.

Kimiko recognized it instantly, and this time she stepped forward, arms reached out, eyes wide with panic. " _No!_ "

Clay only gave a lopsided grin as he held up the can of Lao Mang Long soup. " _Now_  yer afraid, huh?  _Now_  yer takin' me seriously?" Kimiko froze, as though she thought any sudden movement on her part would cause him to down the soup. But minutes passed, and nothing happened, besides the slight fading of Clay's grin as his eyes swung from her to the can and back and his brow furrowed, erasing any sign of his earlier crowing in a sea of doubt.

She could still do it. She could still talk him down. Very carefully, Kimiko started to breathe again.

"There's no turning back once you drink it," she said, her head heavy with headaches and ash. "You'll become a monster."

His grip was still tight on the can, but he hadn't even opened it.

"You won't even be you anymore. It'll wipe out every trace of your  _humanity_."

He bit his lip.

"I  _know_  you, Clay. I  _know_  you don't want that. You don't want to lose  _control_  over yourself like that."

And finally, he lowered his arm and turned towards her, mouth thinned in a grim line.

"Who're you t' tell me what  _I_  want?"

 


	4. Insert Token, Try Again

Raimundo wasn't sure what he had been expecting in the center of the freak tornado (which was really more like a hurricane at this point). But it certainly wasn't  _him_.

As soon as Jack locked eyes with him, he lowered the Sword of the Storm and the winds immediately died down. Dojo landed, but Raimundo didn't dismount, only scowled as Jack approached with a dusty face and a sore shoulder. Omi and Kimiko could be dealing with Clay _right now_ , and here he was, stuck with a waste of time. The only reason Raimundo didn't lean forward and tell Dojo to just take off was because, as far as he knew, Jack was the one who was with Clay last. If anybody had any information whatsoever, it would be him.

Jack stopped just out of range of Dojo's large maw, Sword in one hand and a bag in another, and craned his neck to try to see behind Raimundo. "Where're the others?" he asked, reminding Raimundo why he didn't put much faith in Jack knowing, like,  _anything_  at all.

"Look, Jack, we're busy. Whaddya want?"

Jack straightened up as though Raimundo's words were a ruler. "Um, yeah, right. You see, uh, I wanted to talk about…Clay. And how to stop him, I guess?"

Raimundo raised an eyebrow, but still leapt off and landed lightly on the bare dirt below. Glancing down at him, Dojo shifted to his more compact size and settled around Raimundo's shoulders. Both of them crossed their arms. "Right. And you'd be interested in that...why?"

"'Cause he's  _freaking me out!"_ And all pretenses of a serious conversation went out the window as Jack broke down under the sheer force of fear. "Like, he's  _Clay_ , but he's  _not_ , y'know?  _Nobody_  should be that nice and, and,  _polite_  about being so  _evil!_  It's just… _wrong!_ " He ran a hand through his hair, rubbed his face, paced a little. "Look, whatever it is you guys did to set him off, you need to  _fix_  it, 'cause I don't even  _know_  what he's going to do next!"

"What  _we_  did?" Face twisted in a snarl, Raimundo strode forward and raised an arm as though he was about to shove Jack in the shoulder. "What makes you think  _we_  had anything to do with it?"

Jack stood his ground in an unusual show of resolution. "Oh,  _I_  dunno, maybe 'cause he's always around  _you?_  I mean, why  _else_  would he just suddenly switch sides? Oh  _wait_ ," Jack added, bringing both hands to his face in a mock show of shocked inspiration. Raimundo's hand balled into a fist. "Perhaps it's his  _evil twin!_  Or  _maybe_  he's just in a  _bad mood_  'cause of something he ate! Or," and here, Jack made sure to make as theatric a gasp as possible, getting far too engrossed in his mocking, " _obviously_  he must have  _absorbed_  all the evil from all those years of  _punching evil guys in the face!_  I hear that's  _such_  an occupational hazard for you losers."

The Big Bang went off in Raimundo's head, engulfing his entire mind in the creation of an answer.

" _Look_ , buster, we didn't come here for your  _sass_ ," Dojo said, pointing a dull claw with a force that would have been more impressive if he could actually poke it into Jack's chest. "If you  _really_  want our help,  _maybe_ you should…Rai? Are you…"

His eyes were pointed towards a space above Jack's shoulder, exactly at nothing at all. His muscles had slackened so that his arms merely hung by his side like an abandoned swing as inside his mind, the first stars were being formed.

Jack took one look at his face and adopted an expression that wasn't exactly empathy, more like tense awkwardness. "Woah, uh…you, you aren't gonna  _cry_  are you? I didn't mean to – "

"Dojo," Raimundo mumbled, but in the wind-torn landscape it might as well have been a shout, "the Sun Chi Lantern. It does its thing with elemental chi, right?"

"Uh," said Dojo, reeling from the disjoint in the conversation, "yeah?"

"Well." Raimundo's lips started to feel dry and when he licked them, his tongue felt much too rough. "Can…can it do the same thing with bad chi?"

Dojo's eyes lit up with enlightenment. Jack, on the other hand, could only say, "Huh?"

"Hannibal didn't use the Sun Chi Lantern to absorb  _Clay's_  chi," Dojo said, his eyes meeting Raimundo's, "he was using it to absorb his  _own_  chi!"

Raimundo nodded and crossed his arms, sucking on his cheek like a jawbreaker. "And he wasn't using the Reversing Mirror to reflect Clay's attack, he was using it on the Sun Chi Lantern, so his chi'd go to Clay instead."

"Alright, can one of you fill me in here, 'cause I'm a bit lost."

"That means," said Dojo, tapping at his chin.

"…that all we have to do is get all that bad chi outta Clay!" Raimundo finished, a bright smile forming on his face. "It's so  _simple!_   _Then_  he'll be back to normal."

"Yeah, okay," said Dojo, and at this point Jack realized that this was simply a conversation he was not privy to, "but Ying-Ying took the Sun Chi Lantern. So how're we gonna do that?"

"Easy," declared Raimundo before turning back to Jack. The redhead had found a battered stump to sit on in order to wait their conversation out. "Hey, that bag's got all our Wu in it, right?"

"Yes, this bag has all of  _my_  Wu in it," Jack replied, pulling it closer to him out of reflex.

"Look, all we need are the Ying Yang Yo-yos. Right now, Clay's got more bad chi than good. So if we get him in and out of the Ying-Yang World, he'll leave behind all that bad chi, and we're all set!"

Before Dojo could voice his assent, Jack began to applaud slowly. The two turned towards the intruder, slightly reluctant to acknowledge him.

"Well, that was absolutely  _brilliant_  deductive work, good job, pats on the back for everyone. Except, oh wait! Maybe  _I_  have something to add?"

"Yeah, like what?" Raimundo asked, crossing his arms. "We want Clay back to normal. And this plan'll get him back to normal."

"Except I happen to know for a  _fact_  that it won't," Jack snapped back, examining his nails with distaste. "Clay got Chase to give Wuya her powers back and then used the Sphere of Yun on them. Even if you manage to go through that plan, he'll still have both Chase's cat army and Wuya's freaky magic powers." Flicking off some imaginary booger, Jack finally locked eyes with Raimundo. "I'm pretty sure  _that's_  not normal."

Raimundo raised his arms in an exaggerated shrug and sent his eyes skyward in exasperation. "So after we're done, we'll get him to release them or whatever!"

"Woah, woah, wait a sec, Rai, reverse," Dojo said right next to his ear. "Didja miss the part where he said that Wuya's at  _full power_  again?"

Shocked that Dojo seemed to be taking Jack's side on this matter, Raimundo grumbled, "We'll get another puzzle box. I mean, we went through it before, it wasn't so bad."

Jack scoffed. Dojo said, a bit too tart than was necessary, "Maybe for  _you_."

Raimundo swallowed down the feeling of betrayal even before Dojo started to apologize, because if he allowed himself to get angry, he would lose sight of the real issue. The real issue being: who even  _cared_  about Wuya and Chase? As long as Clay was okay, they could just go ahead and rot in the Sphere. And besides, Clay going back to being Clay but with the added benefit of spooky magic and a giant cat army sounded pretty great. But when he voiced this opinion out loud, Jack gave him a nasty glare that said, 'I thought you were supposed to be the  _good_  guy' and Dojo looked ambivalent, torn between pragmatism and sentimentality for a time long before either of the boys.

"Okay look," Raimundo said, realizing he was currently in the minority. "Let's just pick up the others and we'll see what they have to say. Jack can pick up Omi and I'll pick up Kimiko and then we'll meet back at the temple."

"Yeah. Send  _me_  to pick up one of  _your_  guys. They  _totally_  won't punch me in the face, ask questions later."

Frankly, all this backtalk from Jack was wearing Raimundo's patience thin – but this particular one created an opportunity that he leapt for. "Dojo can go to vouch for you and I'll use the Silver Manta Ray or whatever," he said, sounding as casual as he was able, hoping that leftover betrayal wasn't leaking into his voice.

If he thought that driving by himself would take his mind off emotional scars rubbed raw, then he was wrong. Flying with Dojo would have made it worse, infinitely so, but flying alone gave him few distractions, and he kept meeting the eyes of his own faint reflection as he stared ahead through the windshield. He probably would have felt loads better if he went to vouch for Jack rather than Dojo, but it was too late now and the thought of actually  _preferring_  to be with Jack freaking Spicer made his mind writhe in disgust and self-pity. So he sped up, forcing his thoughts to just try and catch up. He never gave them the chance. The chassis of the Silver Manta Ray rattled and complained and threatened to peel right off, but Raimundo only went faster. He didn't exactly land in Trindade; rather, Trindade just happened to stop him when he descended.

The ash cloud still loomed over the volcanic island, but it seemed less severe, somehow. At the very least, it did not obscure the tall rock wall that surrounded the neck of the volcano like a scarf. It would have looked absolutely ridiculous if Raimundo was ignorant of what it signified. But unfortunately, he wasn't, and he flung himself out of the cockpit and shouted Kimiko's name and realized his first mistake when he breathed in his first breath of volcanic ash, which went down his throat about as smoothly as the smoke from his  _tio-avo_  Filipe's cigar. Pulling his shirt over his nose, he called Kimiko's name again, but much more hoarsely. His eyes watered so aggressively that he was sure he looked like he was crying.

The ground looked like it was covered in snow but when he walked, it billowed around him like heavy sand. The place looked desolate – it had looked desolate before, but it had been a different kind of desolate, an angry, jagged sort of desolate. Right now, it was the sort of desolation that came with the sheer absence of everything else. If Hell existed, it could probably take some pointers for interior decoration from here, if it hadn't already.

Raimundo tracked his way around this morbid, rocky beach, wishing he had brought an umbrella. Every once in a while, he would call out Kimiko's name and listen as his voice got sucked into the soot. It was only after the fifth repetition that he actually got an answer.

Kimiko had been sitting against the sheer wall. So much ash had aggregated on top of her that Raimundo almost expected her to be frostbitten when she roused herself and shook off everything that had piled on her. She walked nonchalantly as he approached, but he could tell by the way she held her arm that something was amiss.

"He  _broke your arm?_ " he said, not even waiting for them to get into talking distance. Kimiko got closer and he saw that she wasn't exactly holding her arm.

"It's just a dislocated shoulder," she said, and gave half a shrug. Raimundo winced for her. "We've got bigger problems. We gotta go to Texas. Where's Dojo?"

"Look,  _you_  gotta go to a hospital," he said, gently wrapping an arm around her uninjured shoulder and taking out the Silver Manta Ray. Kimiko's eyes shot towards it and then squinted at Raimundo's face, but whatever she wanted to ask she decided was less important than what she had to say.

"Clay drank the Lao Mang Long soup."

The Silver Manta Ray flumped into the snowy ash.

"Are…are you sure…?"

Kimiko gave him a rotten look before cautiously bending over to pick up the Wu. As soon as it expanded to its more airworthy form, she jumped into the cockpit with all the grace of someone who  _didn't_  have a dislocated shoulder. "Look, we might have a bit of time 'cause I don't think he knows where she is, and anyways maybe he's not even going after her. But we should at least check, so  _get in_  already!"

Raimundo obeyed, his head full of bees. He didn't even get to strap himself in before Kimiko took off, holding the wheel with one hand. The Silver Manta Ray screeched in the air, cutting through the atmosphere like fingernails on a chalkboard. Both of their backs pressed into their seat, and Raimundo vaguely heard a gasp of pain as Kimiko's shoulder dug into the plush upholstery.

But he felt distant, distracted by the fact that with just one sentence, his plan fell apart. Drinking the soup wasn't just a matter of 'less good chi, more bad chi,' it  _changed_  you. Even in the best case scenario, even  _if_  Clay became good again after going through the Ying-Yang World, he would still need to drink the soup in order to keep himself from turning into a monster for the rest of his life. And that would be a long time, considering that he couldn't die now. But, as everybody grew older while he merely grew up, it would certainly kill him, but slowly, until the only one left was Dojo. And considering things, who knew how long  _that_  would last.

Raimundo lurched away from the future when Kimiko let go of the wheel with her only working hand to fiddle with the GPS. It suddenly occurred to him that he didn't actually know  _what_  they were doing.

"So, uh," he stuttered, eyeing the wheel and starting to dig his nails into the arm rests, "why are we going to Texas again?"

"Clay might be going after Jessie next. I already emailed her, but I don't know if she's checked it yet." As she said this, the Silver Manta Ray steadily continued to accelerate until Raimundo was afraid they'd break the time barrier or something.

"But how d'ya know where she is?" he asked, struggling not to panic. The fact that Kimiko held only determination in her eyes was the only thing that was keeping him level. He paused. "Wait, why d'ya have her  _email?_ "

"I'm living in a temple full of guys, Rai. I need all the female correspondence I can get."

It made sense, of course, but Raimundo couldn't help but feel…hurt? Left out? It just felt strange that he didn't know this, nor did Kimiko think it was necessary to tell him. Dojo's words echoed in his mind, with a bitter, mocking tone. But at the same time, it was somber. Didactic.

He looked at her, because when he saw her face, he could forget that Clay was the enemy now and that he would have to fight  _him,_  the guy he slept next to for the past few years, the guy who snored like a million chainsaws, the guy who  _almost_  had a good poker face but whose freckles twitched whenever he had a good hand. How could Kimiko move beyond that? How could she not even look  _reluctant,_  how could she keep doing what needed to be done, even if the thought of doing it was just horrible?

Without a hint of disgust or disapproval, only a sincere desire to learn, Raimundo asked, "How are you so  _calm?_ "

A crack broke across Kimiko's disposition and her lips pulled back as her teeth bit down on them. "God _dammit_  Raimundo," she said, clutching onto the wheel just so that she wouldn't let go, "you just  _had_  to ask."

As though someone had untwisted a hose, tears and snot instantly overflowed and burst through the calmness while Kimiko's keening crescendoed into a wail. Raimundo tried to avoid her shoulder the best he could as he pulled himself towards her, and the GPS informed them in the business-like tone that Kimiko used to have that they were entering Texas borders.

* * *

If Jessie was honest with herself, she hadn't been honest in a long time. She had been, once, maybe, but it was easy to fall out of honesty. Not so easy to get back into it.

The same with people, kind of. Easy to leave. Not so easy to reconcile.

If Jessie was honest with herself, she would have told herself that it was stupid to fret. Clay was sweeter than stolen honey. It was  _impossible_  for him to hold grudges. But instead of being honest with herself, she remembered how mistrustful he was the last time they met. She remembered what she had done to deserve – yes,  _deserve_  – his complete lack of trust in her. How many people could forgive that?

Of course, she could have actually tried  _talking_  to him, instead of sending a letter with no return address. Actually find out what he thought of her now.

But instead, she took the Wings of Tinabi. And waited.

Jessie didn't need to be honest with herself to know that this wasn't quite how she expected the inevitable meet-up to go. This was mostly because she was finding herself uncertain whether Clay was actually Clay. He was much too  _hairy_  to be Clay. And… _sharp._  Sharper than the Golden Tiger Claws that barely fit over his arm.

When she turned around to jump back in her plane, a stone column exploded from the ground and pierced through its belly and out the wing. Well, she knew he could do that.

"Wings of Tin – "

Clay's hands flared green and shot a fireball that knocked the Wings out of her hand.

She had no idea he could do  _that_.

The Wings of Tinabi clattered somewhere behind her, but she didn't turn her head. Taking her eyes off whoever it was in front of her would be suicide.

"Hey, sis," Clay said with a voice that was definitely his but with an added layer beneath it, so faint it could have been imagined. "How 'bout a round two? Le's settle this once an' fer all…"

With a smile as sharp as his claws, Clay brought his hands to the ground, summoning streams of green fire that spread out in a large circle around them. The earth shuddered and then ascended with no fanfare, forcing Jessie off her feet as their impromptu arena rose. She considered jumping off, but one look over the edge quickly disabused her of the thought. It was as though the world had simply fallen away, leaving the two of them to face each other.

Jessie stood and said in a voice about as shaky as her legs, "What're you  _doin'?"_

He was still crouched down, looking like a spring-loaded bull ready to charge. "Y'cheated last time. This time, 's gonna be  _fair."_  He didn't laugh, but the absence of it rang loud and mocking in Jessie's ears. At least until, eyes flitting towards something in the distance, his smile dropped and he threw himself flat on the ground. Only then did she hear a different sound, a distinct roaring in the air. She didn't really have time to think about what it meant before she was plucked off the column of earth and thrown bodily into the back seat of a vehicle she didn't really recognize being flown by people she did.

" _Ai_ , that was rough," Raimundo sighed, rubbing his shoulders. "Gimme the wheel."

Kimiko slid her way to shotgun while Raimundo leapt over and plopped into the driver's seat, a maneuver that Jessie was certain wasn't legal. She noticed the way Kimiko held her arm and the presence of a problem that she  _did_  know how to solve rocked her out of her stupor. "Git over here," she grumbled, grabbing Kimiko's shoulder with all the familiarity that pen pals had.

" _Ow_ ," Kimiko complained, wrenching her arm away, but the joint clicked back into place, no longer an angry aberrance of anatomy.

"Yer gonna need a splint fer that. Now're y'all gonna tell me  _what in tarnation's goin' on?"_

The two monks glanced at each other, going through a mental contest to see who would have to explain. Kimiko lost. "Clay's not exactly himself right now."

The Silver Manta Ray suddenly rocked under the assault of well-aimed fireballs. Raimundo, spewing curses, went through several evasive actions that bruised both of Jessie's legs. "Gee, I hadn't  _noticed,"_  she spat, righting herself again. "Y'all gotta plan?"

"We're going to the temple to meet up with the others," Raimundo told her, curt, business-like.

"Y'all gotta plan t'  _git my brother back t' normal?"_

"Uh," he replied, less business-like.

"We're working on it."

Jessie opened her mouth to shoot a sharp retort, but screamed instead when Clay suddenly jumped out from a portal in front of them and landed solidly on the nose of the Manta Ray. With the speed that Raimundo was holding, however, he instantly lost his footing and disappeared up the windshield. Above, they could hear the sharp, grinding sounds of claws digging into metal die off and segue into dull, persistent pounding. The ceiling buckled.

Kimiko raised an arm to Raimundo's shoulder and winced as her own twinged in response. "Rai! You gotta shake him off!"

" _What?_ " Jessie pulled herself up and pushed her way between the two front seats. "We're  _thirty thousand feet in th' air!_ "

"Yeah, but we can't just let him break his way in here," Kimiko snapped, having to shout over the pounding. "And he drank the Lao Mang Long soup, he can take it!"

Raimundo's arms stiffened. "Yeah, but…"

"Izzat th' thing that gave him that shark's smile?"

Kimiko nodded.

In one easy movement, Jessie grabbed Raimundo's shirt, tossed him in the back seat, and settled into the pilot's chair. " _Hey,_ " Raimundo protested, mostly because he had hit his head in the process. "What was  _that_  for?"

"Far's I know,  _you_  don't have a pilot's license," Jessie said, her voice a forced calm as she examined the controls – strangely familiar despite being fifteen hundred years old. "I do."

Raimundo squinted at this. " _How_  old are you again?"

Jessie answered by going into a barrel roll and speeding up,  _far_  faster than the others were able (or willing) to go, and thus began what Raimundo and Kimiko would long after dub the Worst, Most Terrible, Life-Shortening Ride of All Time.

To be honest, it was probably worse for Clay. But at least he didn't have to stay in the vehicle the whole trip.

* * *

Omi ran up to the Silver Manta Ray before it even properly landed, which annoyed Jessie to no end. Still, she managed a smooth landing without any casualties and popped the cockpit open, though she left the engine on.

"You have returned!" Omi bounded ebulliently all the way to the nose of the aircraft. Jack followed with feet that dragged. "We have been waiting for a long time," the small monk added, though nobody was quite sure whether this was meant as a statement or a reproach.

"Yeah, he was moping for  _hours_  and  _what the heck is she doing here?!"_

Jessie returned Jack's glare. "Yer right. Bein' Clay's sister, I ain't got  _nothin'_  t' do with this."

"Everybody just get in," Raimundo cut in, leaning out between the front seats and, conveniently, in front of Jessie.

"But you just got here!" Dojo unwrapped and allowed himself to drape loosely around Omi's shoulders now that he wasn't jostling around so much.

"Yeah, and now we're  _leaving,_ " Raimundo said, emphasizing the last word with a forceful jab towards the back seats. "We'll explain in the air, but we  _really_  gotta move."

Jabbing a finger of his own towards a distinctly sinister aircraft, Jack asked, "Why do we have to leave  _my_  jet behind?"

There was the unmistakable sound of a hole tearing open in spatial continuum, and the next second, Jack's jet was flying through the air through the unconventional means of being thrown. Omi watched as it soared majestically to the ground and exploded. When he turned back to the Silver Manta Ray, he saw Jack was already curled up in the back seat. " _Let's go let's go let's go!"_

A sudden roar from behind propelled Omi to fall onto his survival instincts and he found himself squished between Raimundo and Jack (or rather, Jack's big bag o' Wu as he insisted on it having a seat as well) as Jessie immediately took off and made a U-turn that rattled his teeth. Only then did he think to say, "What about Master Fung?!"

Jessie gritted her teeth and said, "He's only after me."

Now that the sounds of explosions had died from Jack's ears, he could properly sit up and regain some semblance of composure. Gesturing towards Jessie's back, he said, "Again,  _why_  is she here? With  _us?_ "

"Jack, shut up," said Raimundo before finally getting everybody caught up on recent Clay-related disasters. When he finished, he almost wished he hadn't because instantly the entire cockpit was stifled by paralyzing silence. At least Jessie wasn't a maniac behind the wheel when she wasn't threatened by something trying to break in. Made the ride a lot calmer.

"Sooo," he said, clasping his hands between his knees, "as long as we're up here, I don't think he can catch up to us. We should figure out a plan."

Jack snorted. "By 'plan,' you mean 'plan to hide,' right? 'Cause  _preeeeety_  sure he's unbeatable at this point."

"Hate to agree with Jack, but…he has a point," Kimiko said, twisting around in her seat. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jessie bite her lip. Kimiko bit her own as well before forcing her next words out. "There might not be anything left of Clay to  _salvage_."

Raimundo opened his mouth, but he could see his own defeated face in the windshield and whatever he had to say curled up like a cicada in winter. Omi looked down and twiddled his thumbs.

"Perhaps…we could stop him  _before_  he drank the Lao Mang Long soup…?"

"What, y'mean  _time travel?_ " Despite the heavy situation, Raimundo managed to fall back onto harsh, teenage sarcasm. "You  _do_  remember what happened the  _last_  time you tried that?"

"Yes, but, I mean…" Omi scrunched up the ends of his robes as his eyes glanced out the window for the words he was searching for. "…There is no golden lining in the sky that I can see…if we don't…"

Silence throttled the atmosphere again. Nobody even had the heart to correct him.

And then Dojo threw off the strangling tendrils.

"Wait, wait, wait! We can do the time travel thing  _without the time travel!_ "

Even Jessie took a moment to direct a long, cold stare towards the dragon, only turning around again when the nose started to dip.

Raimundo coughed. "Dojo, you may need to make sense, please."

"I'm talking about the Hodoku Mouse," Dojo elaborated, his coils tightening around Omi's head in excitement. "If we can find it again, we can stop everything before it happens!"

"I dunno, this sounds an awful lot like time travel."

"Look, it's  _nothing_  like time travel. If we use it, we can go back to before Clay drinks the soup and then get Hannibal's bad chi out so that none of this ever happened!"

"You're right," said Raimundo. " _Nothing_  like time travel."

Hearing his tone didn't make Dojo affronted, rather, it just made him more excitable. "It's not, I swear! Time travel's like packing your bags and moving somewhere, but the Hodoku Mouse is like, like, a giant reset button…or…it's like a giant scarf that, that, you unravel to reknit…um…no wait! It's like in video games, when you restart a level after you die!" Dojo almost tugged out his beard, being so happy with his contemporary analogy. "You're not  _time-travelling_ , you're  _redoing._  The Hodoku Mouse resets the entire universe back to the point where you wanna do things different, right? It also resets its own location, though, so make sure you get it right the first time."

"Sounds great," Jessie said. "Where is it?"

"That's a very good question," Kimiko said, staring fiery knives straight at Jack's throat. Contrary to her expectations, Jack didn't wilt under the attention, but puffed up his chest and adjusted his jacket in a way that brought to mind her papa's stuffy board directors.

"Now if I'm interpreting this situation correctly, it appears that once again, your bullshit biological magic detector has failed you." The levels of smug emanating from Jack threatened to smother the others and, in fact, managed to completely distract Omi from chastising him about his language. Dojo gently grabbed his nose and grimaced at the caustic jab. "And so," Jack continued, hand in his jacket, "it is once more up to  _technology_  to save the day!" Whipping out his arm and knocking Dojo in the head, Jack revealed a small, diamond-shaped object that looked much too unimpressive to warrant his longwinded flourish.

"It's my Wu Tracker," he said, before anybody could ask. Not that anybody wanted to. "It can also record the unique energy signatures each Wu emits and tell me where each one is at any given time," he added when nobody showed any interest.

"Woulja stop gloatin' an' jus' set it up already."

Jack grumbled as he fiddled with his device, something about 'mindless plebs' and 'Texans,' but stuck the glorified GPS on the windshield without any further dramatics. Jessie, who showed much self-control in ignoring whatever Jack had said, now turned to glare at him.

"Are y'some sorta moron? Y'can't go 'round a'coverin' up windshields, it's against th' law!" Despite saying this, she pointed the Silver Manta Ray in the direction the device pointed.

"You got your pilot's license with a fake ID," Kimiko pointed out.

"Yeah? So?"

Jack's grip on his armrest tightened until he cracked his own fingernails. "Seriously.  _Why did we bring her."_

Luckily, the rest of the ride passed without the FAA making any comment – not like they could know anyways. And while the trip felt longer than it should have with Jack's near-constant whining combatting with Dojo's hurt feelings, Omi's poor attempts at peacemaking, and Raimundo's snark, in actuality, it didn't take very long for them to find themselves circling over a valley somewhere in Greece.

"So it's underground?" Jessie squinted at the green expanse below them. "This fancy jet ain't got drillin' capabilities, does it?"

"My, my," Jack said, his voice oozing like a particularly self-important snail. "It appears – "

"Get to the point, Jack."

Jack dropped his arms and sighed at how  _unsupportive_  everybody was being, then dug into his bag. "Serpent's Tail. We'll fly through the ground."

"Y'want me t' point this thing  _down?"_

Jack snorted. "Don't be such a  _baby._ "

"You play chicken with other pilots all the time," Kimiko added, shooting a glare towards Jack, "so just do the same thing, only don't pull up like you usually do."

The Serpent's Tail clunked to the floor. "Are you  _kidding_  me," Jack said, or at least tried to say, but Jessie had gathered enough faith and courage to nod and immediately go into a nosedive, which left Jack's words forming an elongated scream instead. " _Oh my god oh my god wait wait wait"_

Everybody screamed incoherently, including Kimiko, who hadn't quite meant for her encouragement to be absorbed so quickly. Omi, still screaming, scrambled to the floor and reached for the Serpent's Tail, which had taken the chance to slide under his seat. Even with his small arms, he could barely manage to fit it in the tight space. But he could definitely feel his fingers brush against the smooth, fleshy Wu.

A rip in space appeared quite spontaneously in front of the Silver Manta Ray and, once they passed through it, Jessie found herself at the ground sooner than expected and in response, twitched her arms so that the aircraft jerked upwards to avoid a direct crash. But momentum still pressed them into a crash landing, bouncing once before skidding the rest of the way to bruised shoulders and hoarse throats. Omi got the worst of it – at least the others had seatbelts to strain against as the vehicle slid to a stop.

The world paused, but not long enough for everybody to catch their breath. Jessie only managed to inhale before the cockpit was wrenched open, the glass hatch thrown aside by something that she could only describe as a creature somewhere in the middle of a dinosaur, a crocodile, and an anteater. And then she blinked and the creature turned into something approximating her brother.

Clay reached in and yanked Jessie out, the seatbelt providing little resistance against his claws. The next instant, her face was sliding roughly against the dirt, stopping only when her head hit what used to be the windshield. She got up, no worse than badly scraped, though by the look in Clay's eyes she wasn't sure how long that was going to last.

"Jessie!" Kimiko cried as she stood up, her seatbelt combusting into ash. She would have pounced on Clay's back if Jessie didn't reach behind her and throw the Wu Tracker over. Clay watched with disinterest as it sailed over his head. It smacked solidly into Kimiko's hand and she winced, but didn't drop it.

"Don' worry 'bout me none," Jessie called back, even though she wasn't standing up straight. "Jus' get th' mousey thing!"

Raimundo vaulted over into the pilot's seat without any fear of hitting his head. At this moment, Omi got up with a sore head and the Serpent's Tail. Jack and Kimiko automatically grabbed onto him while he set one hand on Raimundo's shoulder, and with an invocation, they sank through the ground. The last thing they saw before their sight was filled with dirt was Jessie tackling Clay to the ground.

"Y'may be monstrous as shit, but yer  _still_  ticklish!"

* * *

The trip through the Earth's crust was uneventful once Kimiko directed them in the right direction. It was only a matter of driving straight until they got there. Pretty simple.

So of course, once they did reach the Hodoku Mouse, a huge problem reared its nasty head.

"We can't just go solid in the middle of all this  _rock,_ " Kimiko said as Raimundo circled around the Hodoku Mouse yet again. It had gotten itself wedged in a fault that was certainly much too small for the Silver Manta Ray to fit into.

"Perhaps if Jack would be so kind as to reach into his bag of Wu once more?"

"Um," said Jack, because in the ensuing chaos he had only just noticed that his big bag of Wu had scattered - some of it was strewn across the floor, but most of it had been strewn to places unknown, likely somewhere back at Greece.

Raimundo immediately recognized his tone and made the appropriate sigh in response. "Well,  _great._  Maybe we can find an air pocket or something and try digging our way back here?"

Jack stared around his feet again. "Hypothetical question, will we need the Tunnel Armadillo for that…?"

Before Raimundo could even respond by smacking his head against the wheel, the earth around them shook with increasing intensity. "Oh great," Dojo said, curled up in Omi's sleeve. "What's happening  _now?_ "

Nobody answered, partly because nobody had an answer but also partly because Raimundo suddenly launched the Silver Manta Ray downwards – the quake had shifted the fault enough so that the Hodoku Mouse was no longer immobilized and was thus free to descend in the newly-created abyss. Everybody fell backwards as Raimundo accelerated, and Omi let go of the Serpent's Tail. Luckily, the fault was now wide enough to barely accommodate the Manta Ray's wingspan and was shuddering wider every second. Nobody particularly appreciated this fact, however, because only Raimundo was wearing a seatbelt at this point and since they were missing a ceiling at the moment, both Jack and Omi found themselves having to cling desperately to the edge of the cockpit in order to stay on. Kimiko had the good fortune to find her back pressed against a seat.

"Slow down, slow down," Jack whimpered as loudly as he could. Raimundo only had his eyes for the falling Wu ahead of them and, fighting against significant G-force, he undid his seatbelt and pushed himself forward. The Silver Manta Ray jerked once as he reached a hand out, but his fingers were nowhere near brushing against the Hodoku Mouse. Eyes watering, he glared and tried to will it closer.

But even he couldn't help but notice the loud crashing noise above them, as well as the sudden downpour of boulders. " _Speed up, speed up!"_  Jack shrieked.

"What's going  _on_ up there?!" Kimiko tried to turn her head, but only managed a glance backwards. Still, she saw a blur of yellow among the rocks, hurtling towards them with all the intent and menace of a very angry meteor. "What happened to Jessie?!"

Finally, Raimundo caught the Hodoku Mouse – or rather, his hand caught up to the Hodoku Mouse with the sound of a snap. "Everybody grab on!" He leaned back, not even bothering to steer anymore, and held the Wu aloft. Omi managed to fight against terminal velocity long enough to leap forward and grab Raimundo's wrist. Jack settled for hanging onto Omi's ankle as he passed. Kimiko reached out with a shoulder that still screamed and protested.

"Wait a sec, where are we resetting  _to?_ " she screamed, trying to be heard above the crumbling earth and the whistling wind and the steadily approaching monster.

" _Hodoku Mouse!"_

There was a blinding flash of the entire universe being unraveled.

 


	5. Within and Without

The first thing Kimiko noticed was that her shoulder was all better, like it had never been dislocated. Which technically was true, she supposed, but also technically not.

She opened her eyes. They were back in Jack's basement lair. In front of her, Raimundo was holding Jack up by his jacket, but as the situation caught up to him, he let go. Behind her was Clay, who seemed to be struggling with the hard reset as well as the sudden lack of the powers he gained from the soup. His stunned petrification gave Dojo the perfect opportunity to flip off his hat and whack the bag of Wu into the air.

The bag expanded back to its full size with a shout of "Changing Chopsticks!" upon which Clay, shaking himself active out of necessity, grabbed Dojo and threw him against the floor with a snarl.

"I got it!" Raimundo declared, backing up as the bag arced downwards. But Clay simply used the Golden Tiger Claws to tackle him from behind. He straightened up to catch the bag, but it had sailed right over him and exploded against the ground, scattering magical objects everywhere. Jack instantly scrabbled on the floor and grabbed whatever he could.

"Aw heck," said Clay in exactly the same manner of a mother surveying a child's messy room. And then Omi kicked the Golden Tiger Claws out of his hand. Before they could even clatter on the concrete, Clay tried to snatch them out of the air – but was stymied by a kick to the head that sent him sprawling. The Claws skittered somewhere out of view.

"I suggest that you pay attention," Omi said, his mouth set in a determined line. "Otherwise, you may suffer much harm."

"Well I suggest that  _you_  git outta my way, else I'll pound yer bulbous head intuh  _paste!_ " Clay roared back.

Both Kimiko and Raimundo slid to either side of Omi, arms raised for a fight. "Not likely," Kimiko shot back. But Omi threw his arms up in front of them.

"Leave Clay to me. You must find the Ying Yang Yo-yos!"

"But – "

"Do not worry," he interrupted, puffing out his chest. "I will be able to handle Clay on my own." The next second, Clay slammed into him like a train that was high off coal, and the two of them collided in the far wall. Raimundo and Kimiko stood frozen, watching as the dust cleared, until they saw Omi flip off of Clay's back and sweep his feet out from under him. Both of them let out their breaths in a light sigh and then proceeded to crawl around, looking for either of the Yo-yos.

Omi, in the meantime, found himself struggling. This was nothing like fighting Sabini, who only knew how to use Clay's weight and brute strength to simply bear the brunt of any attack and return with twice the force. Clay, on the other hand, dodged and blocked and weaved and feinted – he never had any of the speed and flexibility of the others, but he was perceptive. He kept his distance and predicted Omi's attacks and waited silently for an opening. Omi, of course, knew how to fight opponents many times bigger than himself – but only when those opponents let him use their weight against them. Clay wasn't giving him any opportunity at all. And it didn't help that sometimes he would abruptly run off to look for the Golden Tiger Claws, stopping whenever Omi gave chase to deliver a powerful blow that he had to struggle to dodge because of his own momentum.

It happened again, after Omi tried to deliver a high kick that Clay simply ducked under before sprinting away, eyes scanning the floor. Omi paused when he landed. Repeating the pattern of 'chase and get punched' was not very savory to him. So when he noticed that his foot was brushing against a certain snake-like Wu, he took the chance with great enthusiasm.

"Lasso Boa Boa!"

Clay spun around at the invocation but couldn't stop the Lasso from constricting around his ankle. He fell to the floor jaw-first.

Omi gave a wide smirk from the other end of the Lasso Boa Boa. "You shall have to deal with  _me_  first _,_ " he said, which probably would have had a stronger effect had he said it after the first time Clay tried to flee rather than the fifth.

In response, Clay jerked his leg upward, pulling Omi to the ground as well, and then jumped on top of him. "Sure, I'm willin' t'  _oblige,"_  he said, punctuating his sentence with applied pressure on Omi's spine.

The petite monk flailed, feeling something buckle, before twisting around and pounding at Clay's side. At least he was keeping Clay from going for the Tiger Claws; if he got them again, it would be over. Although it would be nice if somebody found one of the Yo-Yos already. But glancing around the room, Omi couldn't help but notice that his friends were still busy on the ground.

And then Jack straightened up, arms fully loaded with Wu. "Sweet! Tiger Claws!" he crowed, loud enough to catch Clay's attention.

Omi would have smacked his forehead if Clay didn't do it for him, smashing it against the ground in an attempt to force him into a concussion. Without even checking if he was successful, he jumped to his feet, shaking off the Lasso Boa Boa, and charged towards Jack.

Being a technological genius, Jack had developed a bit of a problem-solving ability. Unfortunately, it applied more to programming problems rather than human walls approaching much too fast for comfort. So, faced with a pissed-off Texan, Jack's first instinct was to shriek and throw the Golden Tiger Claws in a direction that was away from him. "Okay, okay,  _take it!_  Please don't hurt me!"

"Jack, you  _idiot,_ " Kimiko screeched as Clay instantly changed course and made a jump for the flying Claws. She abandoned her search to make for them as well, but she already knew she was too far away. Clay's fingers were already brushing the Wu.

It was at this moment that Raimundo straightened up. He flung something straight at the spot where Clay would have to land. " _Ying Yo-Yo!"_

There were many things Clay could do, but changing his trajectory wasn't one of them. He disappeared into the portal along with the Golden Tiger Claws, the curse he spewed out cut short when it closed behind him.

Now that the threat of Clay escaping was over, Kimiko was free to give Jack her full glare. "Why didn't you just use the Golden Tiger Claws to  _leave?"_

"Uh," said Jack, hugging his acquired Wu tight. It would take the remainder of his dignity to admit that it had simply not occurred to him.

Raimundo hadn't paid any attention to any of this and instead had gone back to scanning the floor. His eyes brightened when he spotted the Yang Yo-Yo and he scooped it up and opened another portal. "Check on Dojo and Omi," he barked over to Kimiko almost as an afterthought, and then he disappeared before she could even offer to go with him.

"Oh my  _god."_  Kimiko rubbed her forehead, because  _boys._  If Raimundo had just  _stopped_  for a second and thought, maybe he would remember Clay's chronic chivalry. Maybe he would have realized that  _she_  was really the best choice to go. But no.

Jack shifted his arms so that the weight of all the Wu was spread more evenly. "So I can keep all of these, right?"

* * *

The Ying-Yang World greeted Raimundo with a floaty embrace that carried him lovingly to a ground he couldn't exactly see. Dust billowed from nowhere when he landed like a feather and when it cleared, he saw absolutely nothing.

"Where'd he –" Raimundo managed before he was tackled from behind. Clay bowled him over completely and in surprise, he let go of the Ying Yo-Yo.

" _No!"_  Despite the weight on top of him, Raimundo pulled himself closer towards the Yo-Yo and slammed his hand on it. But Clay's reach was just as long, if not longer, and his meaty palm slapped down on the Ying Yo-Yo's string.

"I challenge you t' a Xiaolin Showdown," he growled as Raimundo snapped his neck upward. "My Tiger Claws 'gainst yer Yang Yo-Yo."

"W-wait," Raimundo said, his expression a mixture of panic and pain. He tried to shift the arm that held the Yang Yo-Yo, but it was utterly pinned.

"Th' game's pick th' Wu outta buncha fakes."

Raimundo bit his lip and tried to yank the Ying Yo-Yo out, but Clay's grip remained firm. "I…alright. I accept." The last word clung to the walls of his throat and ripped away the lining as it was dragged out. Neither one said anything as the Ying-Yang World distorted into something that was rather similar, because not even a Xiaolin Showdown could make it any more bizarre. The Ying Yo-Yo flew up and popped into disappearance and at the same time, several copies blended into existence around their feet.

Clay fired off a grin. Raimundo flinched. "Gong Yi Tampai!"

The showdown started with Clay's shoulder slamming into Raimundo's nose like a shuttle slamming into the Earth's atmosphere. Raimundo could do nothing else but crumple and slide backwards, straight through fake Yo-Yos that fizzled out of existence as soon as he touched them. Using his momentum to flip back to his feet, the Brazilian clutched at his nose. It didn't feel like it was broken but still, when he pulled down his armor's mask, his hand came away covered in blood.

"Woah, woah! This isn't a  _fight,_  dude!"

Clay rolled his shoulders and wiped his hands on his jeans. When he leaned forward, Raimundo could clearly see his familiar smile. "Yeah, well, while we're here an' all." Then, with a force that displaced all manner of dust, he launched himself into a terrifying sprint.

Raimundo resisted all instincts to run away. Planting his feet on the ground, he watched as Clay approached with all the inevitability of the future. Then, he flung his hand out. "Yang Yo-Yo!"

Without even slowing down, Clay made a quick slash in the air and instead of sliding out of the Ying-Yang World, slid into Raimundo's back; once again, Raimundo's face found itself meeting the ground.

"Aw, c'mon! Y'didn't reckon I'd fall fer th' same trick twice, didja?" Clay's laugh was absent of any cheer. When Raimundo pulled himself to his feet again, he saw that Clay's smile had entirely disappeared. "That's almost insultin'."

If his hood wasn't in the way, Raimundo's hair would have stood on end. But instead, he shifted to a more stable stance, his eyes flitting around the sea of Yo-Yos. He didn't actually need to win the showdown, he just had to find a good opportunity to use the Yang Yo-Yo before Clay won.

With another swipe of the Golden Tiger Claws, Clay disappeared into a portal and instantly reappeared above Raimundo, who was able to dodge before all one-hundred-and-seventy pounds of Clay landed on his head. But he didn't escape completely; before he could spin around for a counterattack, Clay's hand snaked out and grabbed his hood. Raimundo soon found his legs pinwheeling in the air as he struggled not to choke.

"Y'know, you'd prolly have more luck if y'all jus' used that Yo-Yo fer teleportin' 'round 'steada tryin' t' git me all caught up in it," said Clay, holding Raimundo out at arm's length without any sign of tiring. Swinging, gaining momentum, Raimundo managed a desperate bicycle kick that connected with Clay's chin. This didn't elicit much reaction beyond a thoughtful rub at the injured area and another ruthless toss against the ground. Raimundo was getting very tired of skidding everywhere. He was starting to get carpet burn.

"Why're y'all tryin' t' use it on  _me_  anyways?" Clay asked, approaching with an unnaturally casual air.

Raimundo jumped up again and backed away, his feet dispersing countless holographic fakes. "We're just trying to get you  _normal_  again," he finally spat out in sheer frustration.

"Ah, I understand." Clay's boots, previously stepping soundlessly, started to thump. "'S long as I ain't a pushover, I ain't  _normal,_  huh?"

"What are you even  _talking_  about?" Raimundo shouted back, shooting a blast of wind in order to push Clay backwards, or at least halt his advance. "What does that even have to do with anything?!"

For a few seconds, Clay was frozen in place, unable to move forward and unwilling to step back. But then with another portal, he was behind Raimundo. The two exchanged several blows before Raimundo flung the Yo-Yo out again, forcing Clay to jump back so he didn't fall out of the Ying-Yang World. "As soon as I'm actually getting' my foot in th' spotlight, soon as I'm  _succeedin'_ , I gotta go back t'  _'normal.'_ "

"Succeeding at  _what?"_  Raimundo shot back, flipping backwards even when Clay made no movement towards him. "All you did was beat some people up and turn into a crazy monster thing!"

"I was  _gainin' power!"_  Clay roared back, his thick arms looking eager to strangle anything in range. "But  _you_  were afraid of that, huh? 'Fraid I'd take over as leader?"

"Clay, you're not even making  _sense_ ," Raimundo said, trying to sound firm in his denial, but falling short. " _Listen_  to yourself, dude."

"How 'bout  _you_  listen?" Clay sneered, starting to circle around. Raimundo moved the other way, keeping Clay in front of him at all times. "Th' only reason  _you_  got chosen was pure luck an' circumstance. Yer a lazy ass an' a screw-up, Rai. You  _never_  deserved th' position."

Raimundo didn't have time for a retort, not even for chewing on his lip, before Clay rushed at him. Aiming a burst of air at the ground that pushed its way across the floor in a wide radius, Raimundo propelled himself upward and hung there, far above Clay's reach.

The Yang Yo-Yo burned in his grasp. This wasn't working, not with Clay on his toes like this. The Golden Tiger Claws weren't helping matters either. He needed to  _surprise_  him, and he just  _couldn't._

The only way he could think of was if he used the Yang Yo-Yo to pop in behind him. But that wasn't an option for him. At all.

The sound of a tear opening in space brought him back to earth in an unfortunately literal way – Clay had dropped from above to deliver a devastating axe kick all the way to the ground. Raimundo bounced twice and found himself unable to get up. At least, not steadily. His entire body grimaced when he forced it up on his feet and checked on his nose. Definitely broken.

"Anyways, this has been fun an' all, but I think it's time t' end this."

"What?" was Raimundo's intelligible reply as Clay opened another portal. He could see the other end appear next to a distant Ying Yo-Yo. And then, scanning the floor, Raimundo realized that it was the  _only_  Ying Yo-Yo. "W-wait, but where – "

"Y'think I were jus' tossin' y'all 'round fer fun?" Clay rubbed at his bruised jaw and smirked. "Though it  _was_  fun."

Raimundo took a step and his knee half-buckled. "Wait! We're not done!"

"We are," said Clay, reaching for the rip.

Raimundo made one last throw. "Yang Yo-Yo!" The small Wu flew through the air, but Clay simply leaned to the side and it passed by, into the portal.

"Y'know, if y'all jus' keep doin' th' same – "

Raimundo rammed his head straight into Clay's chest with surprising force, considering that he had just crashed several feet into the ground. He was in no state to tackle anybody, which meant it was the perfect moment to tackle. Even if it meant popped knees and a split skull.

The two of them fell through the Claw-made portal, after which Raimundo fell back to the floor with a horrible headache. Clay continued to stumble backwards, and when Raimundo looked up, he was gratified to see the look of utter shock and confusion before Clay toppled into the Yo-Yo-made portal and fell straight out of the showdown.

The gratification fell away when he saw what was left behind – as Clay had passed through the threshold out of the Ying-Yang World, something like a dark skin peeled off, unable to follow. It was thin and smoky, yet viscous at the same time, and as he watched, it coalesced into a horrible, demonic form that towered and snarled.

A bird's cry shifted Raimundo's attention upwards, and he saw a small, familiar form drop. As soon as it landed, it was as though a very selective vacuum had turned on, and the black, sticky  _stuff_  was sucked away.

Hannibal stood in front of Raimundo with that ever-present smirk that both frustrated and sickened anybody who saw it.

"Well, that was in'erestin', wasn't it? Not as much chaos as I'd like…but in'erestin'.

"I  _knew_  it," Raimundo said, trying to sound impressive. It was a bit hard when he could only manage to get to his knees. "You lost, Hannibal. I stopped whatever your stupid plan was."

Hannibal rubbed his non-existent chin with an earthy tendril. "True, I was hopin' t' come outta this with one-a y'all dead. But fer one, you look 'bout half-dead already." Raimundo raised a hand to his head and gave Hannibal the satisfaction of seeing him wince. "An' fer another, I figure I'm still gettin' away on top."

The bean reached out and touched the Ying Yo-Yo, and the Ying-Yang World thrummed as the showdown ended. Raimundo blinked, feeling the Yang Yo-Yo disappear in his hands.

"Y'all oughta pay more attention, boy." Hannibal turned around with a snicker. "Ying Yang Yo-Yo!"

" _No!_ " Drawing from strength that wasn't there, Raimundo lurched up and managed to dive into the portal after Hannibal before it closed. Before he even hit the floor, before he could even properly see his surroundings, he shouted out, "Stop him!"

But the sound of a "Golden Tiger Claws!" and two subsequent thuds told him that nobody could. And with that, he simply didn't feel like getting up, not when the world was full of pain and failure. So he stayed on the floor.

"Rai! Are you okay? What happened?" Kimiko, who unfortunately wasn't a mind reader, pulled Raimundo up. Light pierced through his eyelids and forced him to confront consciousness. But he rebelled by keeping his eyes firmly closed for the moment.

"Clay…is he alright?" he managed.

"Well," said Omi, and the way his voice distanced itself from the question made Raimundo's eyes snap open and search his surroundings.

It was hard to miss Clay. He was on his feet, thankfully, but had dragged himself over to Jack's table and slumped over it, head in his hands, fingers furiously entangled in his hair. He was uninjured, but Raimundo could easily see that his breaths were shaky at best. And yet, he made no sound.

"He's," said Kimiko, and she trailed off into a full stop.

The door to the basement opened and Jack came in with a bowl of pudding. "Are you  _still_  here?"

* * *

The first day back at the temple was for recuperating, not only for Raimundo but also Clay, who had refused to (or couldn't) say anything and who had instantly gone to his room and didn't come out for anything. Not even for dinner. And when he refused the food they took to him, Omi wondered out loud if perhaps he was still not himself until Kimiko elbowed him into silence.

The second day was also for recuperating, or so Raimundo assumed, but he woke up unnaturally early and because staring at the ceiling until the sun rose didn't sound like fun, he slid out of bed and limped around the grounds. Granted, jolts of dull pain running up and down his legs weren't fun at all, but it was something.

He wouldn't exactly call his stroll calming, but it was satisfying, in the sense that he was doing something that didn't require thought or even any modicum of attention towards his surroundings. That changed when he passed by the vault – the light breeze flitting out the door scratched at his mind as though it was a chalkboard, and he found himself peering through the doorway just in time for Clay to walk straight into him.

Raimundo sprawled to the cobblestone and felt his head split all over again. Clay seemed to bounce rather than fall, and because of this he was instantly back on his feet and pulling his casualty up. "Sorry, sorry," he repeated, like a lamentation. When Raimundo's vision swam back into focus, his eyes couldn't help but flit to something in Clay's arms. There was a bit of a delay before his brain managed to place the visual input – it was the Longi Kite.

"What're you doing with that?" he snapped and immediately regretted it. He had acted on instinct, reacting on the assumption – no, the fear – that Clay still had some lingering evil in him. But the way Clay fidgeted, the way his face contorted in uncomfortable guilt, it was clear that this wasn't the case. Raimundo tried to relax. "Sorry, I meant, um." He rubbed at his eyes with his palm as though he were rubbing away his thoughts. "Look. Let's just both get some sleep, okay?"

"I gotta go." The words stumbled out in a collapsing conga line. Raimundo whipped his head upwards much too fast and ended up dizzy and light. When he could see clearly again, Clay was looking down to the side so that any glare directed his way would be deflected by his hat. Raimundo glanced down again and noticed that Clay was holding something else – a laundry bag. It didn't look very full. There was probably enough space for, say, a change of clothes.

"Where?  _Why?"_  he added, deciding that the latter was probably the more important question.

Clay's grip tightened around the Longi Kite enough that, if it hadn't been a magical artifact, he would have surely crushed it. "I, I cain't stay. It's jus'…you…I don'…I shouldn'  _be_  here."

Seeing the way that his body tensed for motion, Raimundo grabbed Clay's arm before he could do anything. It was almost unfair. Clay couldn't even wrench his way out of Raimundo's grasp without hurting him. "Look, if this is about all that stuff you did, that wasn't you. None of it was your fault, so just forget it."

"Y'all don' understand," said Clay, calm, measured, nothing at all like the way people said it in overdramatic soap operas. "Everythin' I did, everythin' I said, I  _meant_  it, Rai. I meant t' do those things an' I  _wanted_  t' do 'em."

"But that's 'cause you weren't yourself, man."

"I wasn't bein'  _possessed._  I wasn't controlled or brainwashed." As the list continued on, Clay tipped his hat lower and lower until Raimundo could barely see any of his face at all. "It wasn't Hannibal doin' all that, it was me."

"But you – "

"None a' that came outta  _nothin',"_ Clay said, his voice starting to rise as he shuddered. "All Hannibal ever did was…give me th' freedom t' act on what I've wanted t' do. I'm…" And here he chuckled, a wry laugh that covered up a choke, "I've been rotten on th' inside all along."

There was not much that Raimundo could say to this. It wasn't that he couldn't understand; he understood perfectly the feeling of hidden resentment bubbling out of your control, the constant battle against secret, horrible desires, the thought that maybe, just maybe, you weren't really a good person after all, because what kind of good person would think these things? And there wasn't really a solution because you weren't in control over your thoughts, but you were in control over your _self_  and that's what mattered in the end, right?

But he didn't know how to put it into words and instead he stood there, hanging onto Clay's arm because if he let go, he was sure a wall would be thrown up between them.

Clay sighed and finally looked down at him. His hair seemed carefully positioned just so Raimundo couldn't see his eyes. "Jus' let me leave."

" _No,_ " he said, fingernails digging into Clay's sleeve. "I didn't get my butt kicked from here to Timbuktu just so you could  _run away!"_  In exasperation, Raimundo threw his other arm into the air, which was an inadvisable move on his part. Clay moved closer in worry when he winced in pain. "Who  _cares_  if those were your secret thoughts or whatever! That doesn't mean they're your  _actual_  thoughts, y'know?" His hand was starting to ache, but he only made his grip tighter. "Are you afraid that we'll hate you or something? 'Cause everybody already forgives you!  _I_  forgive you! You know that, right? You aren't just gonna go away when we went through so much trouble getting you back, are you?"

The Longi Kite dropped to the ground. At first, Raimundo was worried that he had said something wrong, that maybe he pissed Clay off somehow. But no. Clay was crying, with short sharp breaths as he tried to hold in his tears, which of course only served to make him cry even harder until he simply gave up and started to bawl.

This shocked Raimundo into tears himself and he let go to wipe at his eyes. "Was – was that too harsh? I didn't – "

"No, I'm sorry," Clay said in between hiccups, and Raimundo could see a smile spread between his fingers. "I-I'm…I shoulda…I'm sorry," he repeated, because apparently that was the only thing he could express at the moment. But Raimundo understood, and he enveloped Clay into a hug – or at least enveloped as much as he could – partially to hide his own tears in Clay's shirt and mostly out of sheer gratefulness. A few seconds later, Clay's arms encircled him as well, wet with snot. But neither of them said a thing, preferring to just stand there for a while as the sun rose.

 


End file.
